The Second Shift by Clare Gallagher

Hidden in plain sight and veiled by familiarity and insignificance, the second shift is largely absent from photographs of home and family. This work is an attempt to recognise the complexity and value of this invisible work. It is a call for resistance to the capitalist, patriarchal and aesthetic systems which ignore it.’ CG

'The Second Shift is the term given to the hidden shift of housework and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment,” writes Irish artist Clare Gallagher in her short introduction to a beautifully designed book of deftly observed images. They evoke the quotidian work rituals of home and family, and her own anger at what is taken for granted. For all that, Gallagher is a quiet photographer, a creator of intimately observed details that can often approach the dreamlike: unwashed laundry overflowing from a basket, a tangle of electrical wires emanating from an extension socket, vegetable peelings, eggshells, food residue soaking in an oven dish. Her images illuminate a domestic grind so familiar and habitual that it all but goes unseen.’

Sean O’Hagan Top 15 Photography Books of 2019 The Guardian

Winner of Backlight & Jelgavas Tipografija Book Award
Edition of 500
Hardcover with coloured edges and dust jacket
170 x 235 mm
57 colour images
64 pages plus two wrapped sections
Munken Lynx 150gsm and GF Smith 150gsm

Poem by Leontia Flynn
Design by Sort
Printed by Jelgavas Tipografija

 https://www.claregallagher.co.uk/