Needless to say my work was considered puerile, immature, shallow and without depth, one guy even went as far to call me a racist and sexist, saying somehow he interpreted my pictures having a nationalist slant.

My cousin had organised two meetings with photographic curators, and I had a meeting with the editor from source magazine www.source.ie organised through the Dublin camera club.

The first meeting was with the editor of source which is based in Belfast.
This was the first talk, which was the most positive encounter as the criticism was constructive, and I did find him quite helpful.

Out of seventy e-mails of work sent to him he choose seven people to meet, so he must of thought some of the stuff I sent him was okay.

His biggest problem with my images was that they are just funny puns, with out any real depth or substance, but he thought they were technically good and well seen. He said he never tried street photography , but he’s heard it’s difficult to do.

He had met Jeff Mermelstein, and that I should study his work as it has far more depth and meaning, I told him I was familiar with Jeff’s work. He then said my stuff was a shallow imitation where I’ve just skimmed the top of Jeff’s style and the style of magnum without getting any of the real meaning behind there images.

Although he did say if I had a continued theme with a story a beginning, middle and end, that he could publish my work.

He said if I could produce ten images equally strong as this of people in Cafes he could publish it.

He said pictures like this might be too disturbing to publish, although he liked it.

In some ways I did find him very helpful, as my biggest critic is me a lot of what he said I was already thinking to my self. Especially when he said in three years time am I still going to be doing this funny pun stuff, and personally most of my personal work was already going in a different direction long before this meeting.

Altogether he was a nice guy, and although he didn’t really like my work he did try to be helpful about where I should go. He said I should email to keep up to date with my future projects, and I think I will as there is a possibility of publication.

But in fairness I’ve looked through that magazine and I don’t like about 80% of the work published in it. It is an “art” magazine, and to most people the idea of what I do being high art is very questionable. In the past they have shown the work Erwitt and Bruce Gilden.

Most people like friends and family I show my pictures to, just scratch there heads and say but who would but these photos on their walls. The last girl I was going out with couldn’t figure out why I would spend most of my free time doing this sort of thing. To tell you the truth every girl I’ve ever gone out with couldn’t figure out the art I was into. Surly I should spend my time doing this type of photography www.philippankov.com that I could sell and would look pretty hanging over a fireplace.

My meeting with a photographic curator with a BA and PHD behind her name, was a disaster to say the least. She had managed to book a space here http://www.templebargallery.com/ for next year and was going around Dublin looking for unpublished photographers to display.

She had no idea what my work entailed, I just went in cold with a box of 30 prints. I wish I had brought a camera with the look on her face of disgust, as she thumbed through the images looking like she wanted to blow her nose in the prints. What made it worse was she had a secretary or PA or what ever the fuck they’re called these days tut-tuting and agreeing with everything she said.

Before she even looked at my stuff I was told to list my influences. When I named off Winogrand she said oh good Winogrand is one of my favourites I can’t wait to look.

About half way through the box of pictures she said that I was no Winogrand as his pictures had more depth and meaning, and said something about the society he lived in. Really I thought he just leered at girls in miniskirts half the time.
According to Miss PHD gallery curator my images portrayed all my subjects in a negative or derogatory light.

And she asked me did I honestly think that a gallery would ever display this. I said I thought it was humorous juxtaposition, she and her assistant looked at each other puzzled.

I later found out from my cousin who organised the meeting, she said that this photo was one the worst she’s ever seen.

I’m very proud of that, to think in all her years as a curator that one of my images was the worst. It was actually one of the first photo’s taken with the new rangefinder. A sign from god I think.

There was no real constructive comments, only my work lacks depth. Yet her current exhibition of empty playgrounds printed flat, has depth.

What bugs me is that at the end of the meeting she thanked me for my time, shook my hand and was very cordial. It was only later through other people I found out what she really thought of it, and said shit about me. I don’t know why she couldn’t say half of that crap to my face at the time.

Any time she looked at one she in particularly disliked she would pudge her fat double chin and hold out to her assistant to sneer at. This one particular I could tell she hated, actually all my recent work taken with the Leica she disliked.

It’s hard to be arty.

I had a brief meeting with another freelance gallery curator, to get advice on how to get into a gallery. He had a exhibition coming up here next year.
Again there was feeling’s of Déjà vu, as my work lacks depth or any real meaning. They are just funny puns. This time I included more traditional documentary photos in the selection.

He said this image was racist and derogatory against women in content. He even pointed out the sign in the background has last Thursday of every month, which he interpreted as a reference to women having a period. I think him even seeing that says more about him than me.

This one also in his opinion was racist in content. For more about 1916 here’s the wikipedia link.

Again he said the people are not portrayed in a positive way, and get this I’ll try not to laugh even when I type this, “this kind of photography is not relevant in post cease fire Ireland”, I shit you not that’s what he actually said.

These two people are not even real gallery directors they just rent the space from a gallery, curate the show, then take a cut from the profits of sales.
What they are looking for is arty stuff that would fetch a high price.

Anyway I’m sick of even recounting this bullshit. I mean I look at Flickr and deviant art and there are so many people out there doing it, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd.
I mean right now it’s not like I’m shooting for myself anymore, I feel like I’m going out on a assignment to satisfy an audience.

That’s not a bad thing, since it does push me onto getting closer and more aggressive in my image making.

At the moment Dublin is not that big a city and among the street shooters I am becoming known, as you see the same bloody guy’s at every protest or market day. It’s good to see these old guard types respect me, and say my stuff is good.

When I was a teenager I went around doing street photography, with a point and shoot. When I was in college doing film making, my lectures told me street was low brow photography, again even my girlfriend at the time thought the genre sucked (bear in mind my really early street photos sucked). It didn’t matter anyway I gave up stills photography in the first year anyway, I was more interested in drawing.

I didn’t get back into it until August of 2006 (after about a eight year absence), because of the cameraquest competion that was on DA.

The difference with documentary style photography as compared to when I was doing drawings or background layouts for animation. When your researching source material and then finally commit to a finished piece the drawing draught work can take a week to a day. But as it’s gradual process you have a sense of a finished piece. With photography (that’s not Photoshop based) everything is composed and done with in a fraction of a second, I don’t get the same sense of completion, it’s like every individual picture is just a small jigsaw piece of a larger body of work. What that master work is I don’t exactly know yet. I feel I’m still trying to find my way.

Even when I was an animator, my deadlines were always late, as nothing was ever good enough, I would always try perfect the details, luckily with my new photographic personal work I have no deadline to meet so I can fuss over the details.

I went to the Magnum website, typed in a image search of Dublin, and looked at the incredible images in there archives.
I feel what I do can be pushed so much further. Then again I look at some of the work the masters and if they were making photos today no one would hardly even notice their work. Especially since we live in the age of where everyone is a photographer. And all it costs is 24 euro to be a pro for a year (fuckr).

For the past three month’s I’ve been shooting more, yet submitting less to the web. Because my standards and editing is becoming more and more ridged, I’m trying to develop a new style (if that’s possible), and break away from anything I’ve doing in the past. But when I’m out there making images I’m thinking to myself, oh this is a Erwitt style shot or a Frank style shot should I really take this, it‘s been done before.

I’ll just have to clear out others opinions from my memory, and start fresh, shoot for myself again.
The images I’ve been making with the rangefinder are totally different from anything I ever did with an SLR anyway.

Looking back at some photos that I made at the start before I studied books of famous photographers, it’s strange you could still say they were in the style of Richard Kalvar etc.

At this stage nearly everything has been done before, although Trent Parke proves you can still be original. And something to strive for. My dad always told me that as soon as you think you’re the best, give up, if there is nothing left to learn, because that’s where the challenge or fun is.

Getting into a gallery is not important since the work that was displayed the previous week was probably photos of some guy wanking onto a rubber swan.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope your all well.