My last post explained how I occasionally get to know cities by finding murals and streetart. On my trip to Poland last month I visited Warsaw again and so a couple of days before I went, spent a bit of time researching and adding pins to a Google map. I found plenty of information to help – murals really are big (in more ways than one) in Poland with cities giving approval for some of the work.

My previous couple of visits to the capital had been with family and so I’d not had time to explore the type of areas that I usually find myself in. I’d seen the Royal Palace, the old square and the main shopping street, but this time I would get out into some of the areas that surround the centre, places that tourists will rarely see.Praga for example still retains many of its beautiful, old warehouses, factories and tenements. They survived mush of the Nazi destruction that happened across the Vistula following the Uprising. Many didn’t go completely unscathed however, and still have the scars of bullet-holes or missing bits from larger weapons. The buildings must have been very grand in their time, with art-nouveau facades and decorative doorways that are now missing plaster and covered in thick, black grime. I’m not sure how safe it really is around there, but I was pretty nervous as I wandered about; my camera gear only out of the bag fleetingly. It was worth it though – some of the best mural art I’ve seen so far was in the district and is included here, along with other stuff from around the city.Once again, these were shot on either my Leica or Yashica, and on three different film stock – Portra, Tri-X and Colorplus 200! They were all processed at one of Warsaw’s high street photolabs, but unfortunately, scanned at tiny resolution. As usual, you can click on any picture in the gallery below to open up a larger version, but please don’t look too closely…