Maciej Dakowicz

Who is Maciej Dakowicz?

Maciej Dakowicz is a Polish street photographer, photojournalist and gallerist. Dakowicz is from Białystok in North East Poland.

He lived in Cardiff, Wales, between 2004 and 2012, where he worked and studied for his PhD. He left work at the university in 2009 and has been working as a photographer since. In 2010 he set up and ran Third Floor Gallery along with Joni Karanka and Bartosz Nowicki. From 2013 he has been based in Mumbai.

Dakowicz is best known for his series of photographs of Cardiff night-life titled Cardiff after Dark. Photographed over a four-year period, photographs from the series have featured in magazines and been exhibited in galleries. Individual images from the series have also been used out of context and with misleading captions by the British tabloid media to support a single narrative about alcoholic excess. This tabloid practice has been criticised; for example, Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian that "Humour is the most obvious thing about his pictures, and their attraction lies in the way they balance grotesque abandon with poised, coolly beautiful lighting." Sean O'Hagan in the Guardian said "However, it is not all outrageousness and vulgarity: Dakowicz also catches the sense of camaraderie and celebration in Cardiff on a Saturday night. He has an outsider's eye for telling detail, a way of showing us, in often brilliantly dramatic fashion and with a degree of gleeful humour, what is right under our noses."