With a degree from the Ecole Nationale Superieure of Photography in Arles in 2010, Lucile Chombart de Lauwe joined the photography collective “the bar Floréal” the same year. Her series At Night, based on night shift workers in France and Belgium was produced during the course of her studies at the Photography school of Arles.
This is how she presents her work:
“Night workers. Those that continue a job that is normally carried out during the day. Continuous work. Excluded in regards to work standards, not because of their activity, but because of the hour that their activity is done. It is negative. A completely different universe, with its own laws. Light there is rare, electric and neon. It is not sufficient for the physical and psychological needs of man, fighting against a social rhythm.
At night “everything is complicated, longer, slower…”
Their life expectancy is 5 years less then an individual working during the day in an equivalent job. Around 20% of the active french population is brought to working at night. “And family life? Well…”
4:00AM is the hour at which the body is at its coldest, when it is most exhausted. A moment of battle with one’s body that is asking only to sleep, and a state of mind that must nevertheless remain awake and alert.
A tense drowsiness, that goes on in silence.
Of the need for a human’s presence.”
Lucile Chombart de Lauwe
