FAVOURITE PLACE ON EARTH

Brick Lane is probably a holy place for all street art lovers. 

Last fall I did a small book with pictures from this area of London as a final assignment in Esthetics- and Media. With the book I also wrote a text about street art and the hate from the unknowing and now, after I’ve been back taking new pictures, I thought that it would fit pretty well here.

This district is well known for its colourful culture, its colourful people and maybe most of all for its colourful buildings. Brick Lane is the definition of street art. It’s easy to get carried away and get enchanted within the brightly coloured alleys covered with impressive paintings in all different kind of shapes. You easily spend a whole day among these artworks and constantly gets dumbfound by the talent of the so called criminals. Street art is, believe it or not, illegal.

With my photos I want to convince the once doubting. Street art, or graffiti, does not need to be something ugly and something that ruins. The paintings are often done anonymous or only signed by something called a tag, a performance name. This does not mean that these artworks are less artistic than paintings hanging in museums signed by well-known artists. A lot of people got the whole idea about street art wrong. Street art is not the words scribbled in the public bathrooms at the central, street art neither is the big letters spray painted on the trains that has been outside for the night. Street art is in fact art. Street art is powerful paintings that rather often carry a strong message, usually political, that affect people around ongoing public debates. With my pictures from Brick Lane I want people to see the beauty in the art that is out there for everyone to see, the art that you do not have to pay any entry to see hanging on a white wall. The annoying scribble we all see in our everyday life is far from the same thing as street art.