The Art We Walk Past
A book series shining a light on the art we walk past every day — each piece isolated, restored, and pinned to the exact GPS coordinates where I found it.
Overview
The Art We Walk Past is an ongoing photography book series cataloguing the street art we pass every day without ever stopping to look. I travel to cities around the world and photograph the murals, stencils, paste-ups, and tags I come across in the wild — the anonymous artwork that turns our streets into open-air galleries.
Every artwork is then lifted out of its surroundings and isolated from the clutter of the street, so the piece can finally have its moment to shine. Alongside each photograph, the book prints the GPS coordinates of the original — an invitation to go find it, stand in front of it, and admire it for yourself.
Inside the Book
A sample from the series — turn the pages with the arrows, the keyboard, or by tapping the edges.
My Role
Back at the desk, the real work begins. Each piece has picked up the grime, weathering, and decay of life on the street, so I carefully clean it up and repair the damage — restoring the artwork to the original artist's intent and returning it to how it looked the day it went up.
At its heart it's a love letter to the artists who give our cities their character, and a nudge to the rest of us to slow down and notice the art we walk past.
From Street to Page
Left — a hand-painted flock as I found it in the wild, weathered onto a roadside utility box. Right — the same artwork isolated and cleaned up, lifted off the street and given room to breathe.
The Philosophy
The Art We Walk Past is a book of creative works that exist without any promise of being seen. Someone made them — painted a wall, stenciled a doorway, stuck a piece to a lamppost — and then moved on, leaving the work to the weather and the crowd that hurries by. The whole project is about giving that art a witness.
An Eight-Step Process
1 · Isolate the artwork. Each piece is lifted out of the noise of the street and given the space and time to shine on its own.
2 · Remove the decay of time. Weathered, chipped, or grimy, the art usually needs a bit of TLC — I clean it up and repair the wear so it reads the way it was meant to.
3 · Notice the little things. The small details that are easy to miss in passing — a signature, a texture, a joke tucked into a corner — get their moment too.
4 · Compose the originals. Each piece is arranged and framed with intent on the page: making art out of the art.
5 · Expand the canvas. Where it helps, I extend the original backdrop out into the page so the work can breathe.
6 · Start the treasure hunt. Every artwork is printed with its exact location in the world, so you can go and discover the original for yourself.
7 · The gallery effect. Set against clean white pages, each piece takes on the presence of something hung in a gallery or museum.
8 · Highlight the art. At the end of the day, it's all about giving the art around us a witness — and a reason to slow down and look.
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