Any documentary photographer who chooses the Roma as a subject must inevitably work in the shadow of the great Josef Koudelka, whose 1975 book Gypsies is now recognised as one of the great photo essays of the 20th century. Time has imbued Koudelka’s often intimate images with an even more poetic quality, and the decade in which he made them is now viewed as a relatively benign period in their long history by the Roma themselves. Much has changed since.
This photograph was taken by the Swedish photographer Åke Ericson in the Luník IX settlement in Košice, Slovakia, in 2013, and shows a young Romany boy, Juraj Mizigor, performing a backflip for his friends beneath a rundown tower block. It is a study in resilience and resourcefulness as well as exuberance. The fact that it is in black and white, unintentionally or otherwise, links it to older images of the Roma from decades past, suggesting their long history of persecution and displacement.
Ericson started photographing the Roma in 2009, and the title of his book, Non Grata (Latin for “not welcome”), speaks volumes about their continuing plight in a Europe that has become less tolerant of outsiders. His project began in Břeclav in the Czech Republic in 2009, and continued into Hungary, Serbia, Kosovo, Romania and Slovakia, where he photographed many of the scattered communities in which an estimated 10-12 million Roma now live.
“My aim,” he says, “is to reach beyond the cliched image of the Roma. I do not only want to show the repression and misery under which great numbers of Roma live. My story is also about the Roma who are integrated in European everyday life.” He cites Spain as an example of a country where progressive policies have led to the kind of integration that too many other countries’ governments still refuse to consider. “My hope,” he says, “is that the book will find its way into the hands of some politician in the European parliament – and it will open their eyes.”