Cardiff After Dark portfolio, a squalid portrait of binge-drinking Britain by Maciej Dakowicz.

Cardiff After Dark portfolio presents the images of the British night life with young women and men vomiting and sleeping on the streets after weekend parties.

The images look like those you might find in some depressing police dossier.

Here, in vivid detail, is a squalid portrait of binge-drinking Britain. Some of the more incapacitated specimens are in mid-vomit. A few have simply passed out.

Tequila-fuelled young women strike crude poses that will (or should) mortify them in the sober light of day. More worryingly, one or two are unconscious on the pavement, dangerously vulnerable in their pathetic state.

One image even shows one triumphal inebriate male advancing on a group of sozzled young woman exposing himself.

The scenes were all captured in Cardiff, in the area around St Mary Street and neighbouring “chip alley”. But similar scenes are being played out in town centres all over Britain every weekend.

This collage of shame was unveiled before an audience of 1,000 people. They leapt to their feet, applauding, roaring with laughter and crying “Bravo!”

Cardiff After Dark portfolio, which was presented at the International Festival of Photojournalism in the French city of Perpignan, was considered a beautifully crafted and realistic portrait of life in modern Britain in the eyes of the experts and professionals.

Polish photographer Maciej Dakowicz, 34, has been capturing nocturnal scenes in Cardiff, where he was previously a student, for the past five years.

Maciej Dakowicz admits that he would be unable to produce images like this in his home town of Bialystok in Poland.

People there just don’t demean themselves like that. But, in Cardiff, he was spoiled for choice. For all that, he remains fond of the Welsh capital.

“Welsh people are very friendly and open,” Maciej Dakowicz said.

“The atmosphere is very cheerful and everyone is having a good time.”

And so they are — if your idea of having a good time is passing out in a pool of vomit.

“The pictures tell stories of drinking, of love, of violence, of lots of things,” Dakowicz insisted.

Around 50 of these photographs were presented at the prestigious festival on a giant screen. The critics lapped them up.

“The reaction was very positive,” said Maciej Dakowicz.

“The audience was laughing. They were making fun of British people.”

No doubt they were.

Britain, the nation which was once regarded as a buttoned-up bunch of repressives in bowler hats is now a land of incontinent alcoholics.