There is a photograph of my mother, taken on the beach at Robin Hood’s Bay in Yorkshire when she was nineteen, during a holiday with girlfriends from her training college, that suggests to me something of how happy she must have been in those days—the days she talks about often now, since she’…
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘Photography always reveals truths about the relationship between the photographer and the person being photographed.’
‘Most family relationships are difficult, and sometimes they can become the most difficult human relationships of all.’
‘The city has defied many plans for its regeneration and its centre is a dispiriting mess’
‘Growing up is learning how to take a stance, before the camera and before the world.’
‘How would I feel if I had messaged for years with someone that I later found out was an AI?’
Brea Souders speaks to Alice Zoo about chatbots, interconnection and the dialogue between photography and text in her work.
‘The man died as Arnold predicted. It kept happening, and it was disconcerting, terrifying, like being possessed or going mad.’
A new story by Hanif Kureishi.
