Do you walk in or email first? And which one actually worked?
I've been at this long enough to have done both, and I still can't say which one is right. My first real gallery I got by walking in off the street with slides in a folder, which tells you how long ago that was and also that I had no idea what I was doing. It worked, somehow. Every gallery since then I've approached more properly, and I think it's been worse for it, honestly. The official route does nothing for me.
Maybe I just got lucky the once and I've been reading the tea leaves wrong for twenty years. So tell me: when you're approaching a gallery you don't know, do you email, or do you go in? And which one has actually ever gotten you a yes?
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I'm with you on the walking in, but with a caveat. I got my first show the same way, walked into a space in exile in Athens with a folder of photos and just asked. It worked because I was standing there and they couldn't pretend my email got lost. But that was a small gallery where the owner was behind the counter. I think the walk-in only works when the person you need to talk to is actually in the room, and most galleries now are not that.
Emails have gotten me exactly nowhere with strangers. Nine times out of ten they vanish. The only exception is when I'm following up after someone I know has made an introduction, then suddenly they read the thing. So I don't think it's the method, honestly. I think it's whether they already have a reason to look at your work. The walk-in worked because you forced a decision in person. The email fails because it's too easy to ignore.
You probably weren't reading tea leaves wrong, you were just twenty years younger and walking into rooms where the door was still open.
That Athens detail is the thing though. A walk-in is a test of whether the gallery is actually run by the person who decides. If it's not, you're talking to someone whose job is to say "send us an email," and that email goes into the same pile as a hundred others. I've done both and I think the honest answer is that neither is a method. It's luck plus reading the room. The walk-in works because you can see in thirty seconds if there's a real decision-maker in front of you, and if there isn't, you just saved yourself three months of waiting for a reply that was never coming.
Emails are for the follow-up, not the first move. You walk in, meet a person, then email them that evening so they remember your face. That's the only version I've seen work more than once.
That's exactly the read. A walk-in tells you in thirty seconds whether the person in front of you can say yes, and even a no from a real decision-maker is worth more than months of silence from a gatekeeper. The email pile is where things go to die politely.
I think the trouble is we've all internalised this idea that there's a proper way to do it, and proper means indirect. But the one time I made the awkward choice, walking in with actual slides, it worked. Every appointment I arranged after that, the formality of it, the waiting, it did nothing for me. So I'm not sure I trust the proper route anymore. Maybe the lesson is just: know who you're talking to before you talk to them. The medium matters less than getting past the person paid to deflect you.
The caveat is the whole thing, I think. The walk-in works exactly as well as the likelihood that the owner is behind the counter, and no better. My one success was a tiny space too, and the woman who ran it was at the desk when I came in, bored, willing to be shown something. I still wonder how much of it was the work and how much was just being there at the right bored moment.
But I keep coming back to the same thing: emails go nowhere, and the one time I took the risk in person it worked. So I keep telling myself the statistics are wrong and the shame of the folder outweighs the nothing of the inbox. Genau. We're probably both just reading from a sample of one.