Grateful Polish photographer stitches up his Welsh hosts

If the Polish photographer was really intent on mocking his hosts, as this thread wrongly claims, then he wouldn't have titled this photo "Pink Hat" in the exhibit, but rather something like the caption I have provided......

• 
  Jeanne Bull
  

This tribute to Amy Winehouse is my fav

They are funny and sad at the same time time. In Poland you are much more likely to find old drunks-with plenty of other problems besides drinking, they generally tend not to be as well dressed as some of the individuals in the photos, i think younger people tend to be a rarity.

When I was in Poland a few moths ago I did see an old unemployed fool pissing into the street. The reason I noticed this was because all the traffic in front of us suddenly went in to crawling speed, naturally I was wondering what was the reason for the holdup-and no it wasn't some road maintenance up ahead, it was the above mentioned man pissing from the pavement into the street (in broad daylight). And the cars slowed down to swerve around his *****

I looked at the photos again and the pics are biased and not the best photojournalism IMO. There was an American photographer who used to take pics of night life in New York, but he managed to show humility of those people.

In those pic one can see no humility, but a judging, cold eye, yet the photographer writes that Welsh people are nice and friendly- I don't see it in the presented pics.

However, knowing how well media can manipulate images to their own advantage, Mail might have done so, since they only presented some of the 50 images. Does anybody have a link to all 50? I would want to see all of them.

Let us be clear - it is not the first time that the good all Daily Mail presents the Cardiff photographs, only the comments have changed. The piece about Dakowicz's "ungratefullness" is just a recent addition. Here is the old, 2009, link:

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1182373/Welcome-binge-Britain-Polish-photographer-documents-years-drunken-revelry-Cardiff.html

Welcome to binge Britain: Polish photographer documents four years of drunken revelry in Cardiff


Apparently, some of those photos are staged. Dakowicz says:

Its Funny Dessi, but I thought it was just Susan Boyle on a night out........:)

Addendum:



Here is Dench'es answer to one of "The Telegraph" questions: Which photographer would you most like to (a) work with and (b) talent spot

a. Zed Nelson b. Maciej Dacowicz

What british outrage? Id say using this forum as a small sample section, British people with a wide range of views on other subjects are pretty united on this one, its funny and paints a true picture of a Saturday night out in certain parts of Britain......

It's relatively harmless fun. When you start encroaching on the space of others, then it becomes a problem. Until that time, let it roll :)

They were referring to supposedly 2,000 negative comments under the Daily Mail article. The TVN24 interviewers must have told him the number and this was his response, which I translated.

oh well... the Daily Mule.....what can be expected?
I suppose MOST of us Brits can laugh at ourselves...which is as much a part of our national characteristic as liking to get pissed and put on silly hats...?

Am I just a complete philistine or am I daring to saying what many might be thinking - that is, that the photos are not exactly a wonderful piece of work anyway?

I mean, that is the point mostly isn't it, that they are supposed to have artistic (albeit in a street sense) merit?

As far as I'm concerned any oul tit with a decent camera and half an eye could have taken these.

Anyone care to point out what is so good about them?

There are many conservative folk in Britain too. It can be irritating for some Brits to see a critique of their country in this way, esp when such people always believe that Poles are milking the economic cash cow. Such is the perception of some.

good point teffle.......there's alot of scope there for pathos or humour or humanity that is quite missing and could have been caught by someone with a better eye or technique or whatever it is.

Well usually the media/people make fun of Poland so i guess it's nice to see this attention get shifted to brits.

I'm sure you could find such scenes in any city in the world. The one thing that those pictures do accurately portray is british women - they are arguably the ugliest and filthiest in all of europe - and i've been all over the continent.

arguably not....please don't judge us all on a handful of drunken Welsh slags, BB man..:)

That's true to a point, BBMan. Poland has bore the brunt of silly jokes for too long but those photos are no joke. I can remember 15 years ago when I was a student. Some girls were really up themselves in Scotland and having travelled a lot since then, I can safely say that even the top ones would only be slightly above average here. Whilst the British binge drinking culture doesn't really bother me, it still brings out some ugly specimens.

My wife and I are off to Kraków this weekend and I really don't want to bump into too many Brits. The hotel I'm staying at is for Brits but I hope not to make a lot of contact with any stag party types.

Has been said many times, but there are attractive/unattractive people in nearly every country.

The way in which they are unattractive varies from country to country admittedly, there is no universal standard and it's often the unfamiliar which leads to conclusions like BBman.

I've seen plenty of unattractive Swedes, Poles, Italians - all the clichéd "beautiful" countries.

Anyway, IMO, there are attractive women in those photos. Not all of them, but they are there.

I saw these photos today and quite frankly, they are not any more different or worse than any other city in the entire world. I have travelled a fair amount and have literally seen this everywhere.

I have seen it in Warsaw and Krakow and Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, NYC, Edinburgh, and in Belfast. Edinburgh was by far the worst.

However, that said, the worst for me is the boozed up Brits abroad. I have seen groups of guys in Bratislava, Prague and Krakow puking their guts out in the old towns. It was revolting.

Yeah, Edinburgh is noticeably bad. A lot of fighting goes on there. The ugly side of what is a really pretty city :)

Only the Daily Mail and its C2DE readers would get outraged. The other newspapers aren't interested and 95% of the population don't care about some student's exhibition in a foreign country. If the provincial gallery goers across the Channel think the photos are funny than so what - fancy-dress costumes etc are meant to be funny.

You've quite clearly never been to Southern Europe, nor have you ever been on the ***** boat" between Sweden and Finland.

Five years?? You could get as many drunken photos during the five-minute walk from Plac Defilad to Emilii Plater - in the daytime! lol

And the taxes paid from the wages of those working class folk enjoying a Friday night out after a long hard week's work subsidised that student's education in Cardiff. And given that he's a Pole it is also, via the EU, subsidising rather a lot in his home country.

Rather than poking fun at those people, he should get down on his knees and thank them.

It's the smugness which really grates - that "our women aren't like this, so we're better than you" attitude.

Someone should remind him what blachary and tirówki are. Clue: they aren't English :)

Then kindly upload some pics of young middle-class Polish women lying comatose from drink among piles of rubbish in Warsaw, exposing their underwear and abandoned by their "friends". Do it. You know you want to.

JonnyM wrote:


He is not a student. He was graduated informatics in Poland and then in 2000 he moved to UK and made a doctorate. Since then he started to take pictures form many of his journeys to various countries.

If you know Polish you should read a link posted in boletus comment (#85). He doesn't poke fun at British people. He said there that Cardiff is a great place and not Sodoma and Gomorra like media presented.


and you... :)


British women are pretty, there are many at those pictures.

Teffle wrote:


I don't consider myself a philistine, quite the opposite, and I think that those pictures are really good, some of them even great. I saw many photographic exhibitions and that kind of photography he presented is a standard level. Average people think it's easy to take pictures but mostly they are even not aware of basic rules of the composition. If you can take pictures as good as he can, then maybe you should become a photographer? I can't.

Sidliste_Chodov wrote


Why have you mentioned it? It's irrevelant.


Yes you can take photos of drunk homeless people like everywhere in the world.

I'm sorry in advance for posting that message here but I'm reading that thread and it upsets me a bit that people made it a war between Poles and British, while these are only pictures, and probably the intentions of the photographer were not exactly like the tabloid press presented. He just found that nightlife in Britain is more colorful and lively, and British people like fun. He just found it as an intresting phenomenom. I saw all of them and those pictures doesn't make me think bad of British people. And knowing that some of them were spontanously posed (like baletus revealed to us) I think that British people must have really great sense of humour. Too bad this forum has obvuiously none.

Hehehe, not likely, Magda!

Completely relevant. He took photos of the British at their worst, because he had an agenda. There's plenty of Polish lowlife (drunken or otherwise) as well. And similar people in every nation, in fact. I don't know why people can't accept that Poland's problems with alcohol aren't somehow "less bad" than Britain's. They may be noticed in different ways, but they can still be just as damaging. I don't know any English people with severe drink problems, yet I lost an uncle in Poland to alcohol. He didn't die of a "superior" form of alcoholism, that's for sure.

What's more, many people over here are fed up of this sort of behaviour, so it's not the behaviour of "all Britons". Coming from a Polish family and having grown up in England, I should be a bottle of vodka a day man; thankfully I'm not. Prefer Guinness anyway :)


Exactly. Not all homeless though. Trust me on this one - I heard the conversations ;)


I know one or two ;)

I am quite aware.

I paint, I am an "arty" person and 3 of my friends are keen photographers - they are good. I am no expert but I stand by my assertion and would like someone to maybe indicate just 2 or 3 of those photos that are "great".

I'm not suggesting they are terrible but they are nothing special - are they?


Classic response.