Street Art

Mural - Spitalfields, London - click to enlarge

Today’s images of Street Art come from a quarter-mile walk up Brick Lane and into Hanbury Street in the Spitalfields area of East London.

The people who produce Street Art are usually anonymous, but their work has style, substance and often an undeniable quality. It also has the power to brighten an urban landscape that may be in a state of decay. They deserve better recognition, and that is reason enough for me to put them up on this Blog for you to view and comment on.

There are three genres in this post. First, the header – a huge Mural of a Heron, spanning four storeys of the end wall of a block of properties. An impressive large-scale artwork.

Second – part of a Wall Painting at street level.

Wall Painting - Spitalfields, London - click to enlarge

This is not the image I intended to capture.  There was a photographer’s malfunction!

click to enlarge

The image I wanted is in the thumbnail reject (left).  But in the haste to grab the shot before I was run down by a taxi I didn’t spot the jarring sun-stripe bisecting the face; and to compound my error I failed to check the histogram. Basic mistakes, I freely admit. But I rescued an image that you see above that doesn’t do the Artist justice (I’ll get back for a second shot), but it seeks to create a dynamic or balance between the face and the fractured ‘eye’ in the left half of the frame. Does that work?

Third – a piece of Poster Art that ticks a few boxes for me.

Poster Lady - Brick Lane, London - click to enlarge

The extravagantly coiffed hair and ink-lined face of this lady, create something that – for me – has presence, even elegance; superimposed on the scribbles of others. She may be damaged and slightly tattered around the edges but she’s very much still there. What’s the story behind this, I wonder?

Street Art is becoming an interest of mine and I’ll come back to it again later this year.