I want to settle something. Not the polite version of it, the real one.

I got my first gallery by walking in. No appointment, no portfolio PDF, just a Tuesday afternoon in Dresden and a director who was bored enough to let me unroll two canvases on her floor. Nothing came of the first one. The second, a year later, did. Every cold email I ever sent, and I sent a lot in the nineties, went precisely nowhere.

So I have a prejudice and I know it. My feeling is that a folder in the hand is still worth more than fifty emails, because the person can see the surface and the size, which no attachment has ever told anyone.

Tell me I'm wrong. What actually worked for you, and be honest about which one: the email, the walk-in, or a person who knew a person. And if it was the email, what was in it, because I never found the trick.