East Ended

East Ended by DOUGIE WALLACE

Photography book launch and exhibition on graffiti and street art and it's impact and relevance on icommunity in and around SHOREDITCH.

Dougie Wallace’s East Ended explores gentrification in and around Shoreditch, an area of London infamous for its recent and extreme metamorphosis. Conveying a similar tone to some of his previous bodies of work including SHOREDITCH WILD LIFE, the Scottish photographer documents the changing narrative told on the walls of Tower Hamlets. From Brexit murals to artist tags, Wallace examines the commentary that street art provides in contemporary society.

Before it was a recognised urban art form, graffiti was an indication of decay that lowered surrounding property values. With the severe transformation of London’s east end, spray-painted walls now signify edginess and an implied authenticity. Artists who used to hone their craft hooded, hidden and nocturnal, are now commissioned by big-name brands to decorate entire buildings in commercial logos for advertising campaigns.

Accompanying the East Ended book is an essay by author Dr PAUL LOWE (Course Director - Masters in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at LCC), discussing the history of the area and why Wallace is poised to capture it in its current state of disarray. As Lowe states in The Age of Shoreditchification, Wallace’s “dazzling vision, powered by a multiplicity of instantaneous flashes of light, subverts all sense of close and distant, transforming the field of vision into a purely photographic space where the sense of picture plane dissolves: any concept of near or far becomes irrelevant”.