Photographing Gypsies

Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 1992. ISSN: 1016-3476. Voi 2, No 1: 98-101 PH O TO G RA PH IN G GYPSIES Dia n e To n g My first encounters with Gypsies— Romá as they call themselves— happened in Greece in the mid-sixties when I impulsively went to Europe, hitchhiked to Greece, and decided to spend time in the Cyclades learning Greek. I remember spending one day with a Gypsy family going door to door selling blankets to the Greek islanders. But my profound personal involvement and commitment were to develop gradually, and accidentally. In the seventies I was finishing up some linguistic research on Judeo-Spanish in Thessaloniki. In a café in the Old Town one day, I met two men who m ust have been acculturated Greek Gypsies. Our conversation ended with them taking me for the first time to the Gypsy quarter, where I returned alone several days later and started taking photographs. Some years later I was invited to a Gypsy farming village near the Yugoslav border for a yearly celebration with wrestling matches and music— an event rich in possibilities for a photographer. Again, the first time I visited a Gypsy community in Volos was related to photography: one of the storytellers in my book G ypsy F olktales, Fatma Heinschink, a Turkish Gypsy now living in Vienna, sent me a couple of photographs to give to her relatives in Volos, just as I was leaving New York for Greece. And so began connections and friendships that have deepened over the years. I’m certainly not the first person to remark on the Gypsies’ warmth, generosity, hospitality, and humor— the last despite the crushing pressures of poverty. (In Thessaloniki the Romá call their ghetto ‘Little Paris’— where houses flood with every strong rainstorm, stagnant water invites mosquitoes, garbage collection is inefficient...). In Greek Gypsy neighborhoods and villages in general, a strong sense of community can coexist with a respect for autonomy. Some people, however, grow unhappy, and leave their homes: a few marry out and others become ‘guest workers’, mostly in Germany. Still, the people who move away usually maintain close ties with the original neighborhood by visiting as often as possible, sharing photographs and videotapes, and making regular phone calls. In Greece there may be anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 Romá of the many groups, including people who have succeeded in passing as non-Gypsies and have entered the mainstream. Although in general Gypsies prefer the flexibility of self-employment, there are many exceptions in Greece— for example, factory workers and sharecroppers. Very few people are nomadic year round, especially now that their children are attending school. W hat is generally believed about Gypsies comes down mostly from literary stereotypes. Although the word G ypsy derives from E gypt, where people often think Gypsies originated, in fact the Gypsies started out in northern India. Beginning around the tenth century, many of them left in several waves, moving westward into Europe, and by the early sixteenth century Gypsies could be found in nearly every European country. Being outsiders, Gypsies were persecuted everywhere they went, by massacre, system­ atic deportation, and (in the Romanian principalities) enslavement. Officially freed in the Copyright © 1992 M editerranean Institute. Univ. of M alta P hotographing G ypsies 99 mid-nineteenth century, the Gypsies have since had to endure programs of forced assimil­ ation in many countries, not to mention less official (though not necessarily more subtle) pressures to abandon their culture. As sociologist Jean-Pierre Liégeois has remarked, ‘The Gypsies, moving about in their nomadic groups, were seen as physically threatening and ideologically disruptive. Their very existence constituted dissidence.’ Centuries of violence against Gypsies culminated in the savagery of the Second W orld War. Hunted down by the Nazis, who were trying to wipe out the entire Gypsy population of Europe, at least half a million Gypsies perished in the Holocaust. Today the Gypsies’ situation remains grim, especially in Eastern Europe. But they are organizing, and raising their voices to counter the almost universal inability, or refusal, of others to see them as they are. W herever the Gypsies are, there exists a disparity...