Shoreditch's wild, wild life in all its grotesque glory

It’s become so easy to be sniffy about Shoreditch, all besmirched as it is with lecherous city-boy drunks, Johnny-come-lately “street food pop ups” and guided pub crawls for hapless young backpackers. But while we won’t bother to go into the tired old complaints about gentrification, it’s important to recognise the perfect storm of creativity, East End charm and some awesomely peculiar characters that made the place so alluring in the first place.

This mix of grime and flamboyance is captured perfectly in Dougie Wallace’s Shoreditch Wildlife photographs, which have been brought together in a new book published by Hoxton Mini Press. The publication showcases this little pocket of east London’s streets – which can seem as much a theatre as a thoroughfare. The images are almost grotesque at times, showing the area’s strange inhabitants in their unposed, often shabby, sometimes poignant, but constantly fascinating states.