Faces from the fringe

Green Bay photographer's trip to Slovakia opened her world to plight of Roma 'gypsies'

By Thomas Rozwadowski
trozwado@greenbaypressgazette.com

A year ago, Slovakia was nothing more than a name on a map to Tina Bechtel.

Now the country has faces. Faces that remain nameless, but ones that stared intently while pressed up against the other end of her digital camera because they didn't know what it meant to have their picture taken.

As Bechtel walks through her "Gypsies (Roma) of Slovakia" photo exhibit at the ARTgarage in Green Bay, she points to the face of a young, married woman looking too childlike to be holding her own malnourished baby.

Another is of a father happily embracing his child.

Although they were reluctant to acknowledge her presence, Bechtel began snapping photos of four men standing against a wall and approached them with reserve so they could see the finished product. The man, who had never seen himself in a photo before, graciously requested a picture of his young daughter.

There are the signs of poverty and hospitality Bechtel noted, like the out-of-place satellite dish propped next to hanging laundry, piles of garbage and an outhouse. Or the way several boys began playing a Casio keyboard and dancing spontaneously for her. Or children becoming overjoyed at the sight of visitors in their settlement.

There are the gut-wrenching inequities — most notably, driving back to a hotel in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava and eating a nice dinner after seeing the poverty of the Roma people, better known to Americans as gypsies.

"No running water. No septic. No heat," said Bechtel, a local artist based in Door County. "At the worst one, houses were put together with whatever material they could find.

"I couldn't imagine living there. I don't know how they survive."

(MORE)

‘Gypsy Fire' burns in photos by Onan, Aydın

A photography exhibition titled "Roma in İstanbul: Gypsy Fire," depicting the daily lives and tragedies of the Roma in İstanbul's Sulukule and Dolapdere districts, is on display at the Tütün Deposu (Tobacco Warehouse) in Tophane, one of the venues of the ongoing ULISphotoFEST ‘07.
The exhibit, which features documentary-style photographs by Timurtaş Onan and Yunus Emre Aydın, runs through July 4.

Out of the gypsy caravan

By Indian Express
Tuesday January 2, 11:52 PM

The gypsies are back. A girl is admiring herself in the mirror. An impish boy is peeking up a skirt. Without flamenco music and swinging skirts, the Roma just peer at you - from within the frames of Zsuzsanna Ardo's photographs. Sometimes, they have their faces turned away.
Black-and-white photographs may seem like an odd choice to capture the life of the colourful Roma but Ardo, Hungarian writer and photographer, is not keen on the exotic. She zooms in on the ordinariness of Europe's largest ethnic community. But the focus is soft, Ardo's eye sensitive.
"These are the moments that touched me," she says. The idea was not to depict the economic misery of the Roma but the way they live, the light as well as the serious moments they encounter." But the intent of the exhibition is serious. Called "The Roma Decade", it refers to the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-15, a commitment by some European governments to combat the Roma's poverty and exclusion.

Seeing the Roma up-close was not easy, though. Over the last two summers, as Ardo wandered in Budapest and by the Danube, they often kept away. "Some were suspicious, but eventually most of them allowed me to picture a slice of their lives," she says. The Roma, who were hounded in Europe, are a disillusioned lot. Amid all their inherited bohemianism, they see the greyness that Ardo has captured. But things are changing. "They are adapting themselves to global developments," says Ardo.

The free-spirited gypsies may still scoff at something called home but for those known to have descended from India, who have a chakra as their symbol and who would call out rani and gav in their musical Romany language, this is homecoming. Even if it is in black and white.
The exhibition will travel to the UK and Turkey.

The exhibition at the India International Centre ends on January 3.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070102/48/6armg.html