Letters from the underground

The first thing you notice is the noise. Not the traffic or the trains, but the colour: every surface shouting over the one beside it, every poster pasted on top of last week's promise. We spent a month walking the same six streets at different hours, watching how a neighbourhood edits itself. By morning the shutters are grey; by midnight they are manifestos.

Nobody we spoke to called themselves an artist. They said printer, painter, night shift, cousin of the guy who owns the wall. The work, though, speaks with total confidence. A short guide to the route is at the end of this piece.

Loud by design

There is a particular kind of bravery in making something that you know will be covered over within days. It changes the pace of the work, and the pace of looking at it. What survives is not the object but the habit: a way of standing back from a wall, squinting, and deciding it needs one more line.

Make it loud enough that the wall has to answer back.

The first thing you notice is the noise. Not the traffic or the trains, but the colour: every surface shouting over the one beside it, every poster pasted on top of last week's promise.

• Start early, before the shutters go up.
• Carry a notebook, not a tripod.
• Ask before you photograph people.

We spent a month walking the same six streets at different hours, watching how a neighbourhood edits itself. By morning the shutters are grey; by midnight they are manifestos. Nobody we spoke to called themselves an artist. They said printer, painter, night shift, cousin of the guy who owns the wall. The work, though, speaks with total confidence.

Every wall is a draft.

There is a particular kind of bravery in making something that you know will be covered over within days. It changes the pace of the work, and the pace of looking at it.