Backstreet murals, golden hour photography, and an unplanned chat with a working artist
I Spent a Weekend Hunting Down Every New Street Art Piece in Shoreditch
Shoreditch’s street art scene changes so fast that I genuinely can’t keep up sometimes, walls I photographed six months ago have already been painted over three times since. So I decided to dedicate an entire weekend to properly documenting everything currently up, before it inevitably disappears under someone else’s fresh layer of spray paint.
Saturday Morning: Brick Lane Warm-Up
Started predictably at Brick Lane, which never disappoints, though I noticed the usual rotation had shifted considerably since my last proper survey. A few genuinely stunning new pieces near the curry houses that I hadn’t seen documented anywhere online yet.
Saturday Afternoon: The Deep Backstreet Dive
This is where things got properly interesting. Wandering the smaller streets off the main tourist routes, I found several pieces tucked away that felt genuinely undiscovered, the kind of thing you only stumble across by actually getting a bit lost on purpose.
Saturday Evening: The Golden Hour Photography Session
Late afternoon light does something magical to street art that I’m slightly obsessed with capturing properly. Spent a solid hour just photographing one particular mural as the light shifted, probably looked completely mad to passersby.
Sunday Morning: The Gallery Comparison
Popped into a couple of the small galleries that showcase street art adjacent work, comparing what’s happening on actual walls versus what’s being formally exhibited indoors. Fascinating overlap between the two worlds that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Sunday Afternoon: The Artist Encounter
Completely unplanned but genuinely the highlight of the whole weekend, I happened to walk past an artist actually working on a new piece and got to chat briefly about their process. These moments are exactly why I love this particular hobby.
What This Weekend Taught Me About the Scene
The pace of change here genuinely never slows down, which is both frustrating for anyone trying to catalogue things properly and also exactly what makes this neighbourhood’s art scene so endlessly interesting to keep exploring.
Full photo gallery from the whole weekend, including exact locations for everything I found, is up now on ditchpitch.uk if you fancy tracking any of these pieces down yourself before they inevitably vanish. I’ve also started keeping a rough mental map of which specific walls tend to change most frequently versus the more established pieces that seem to enjoy a longer, more respected shelf life among the local artist community. Worth knowing if you’re planning your own hunting trip and want to prioritise the fast-rotating spots first before they inevitably vanish. None of this required any special equipment beyond a decent phone camera and a genuine willingness to get slightly lost, which honestly is half the fun of the whole exercise anyway.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/