The history of photographic representations of Romani and Sinti people is marked by extreme social inequality between those who stood in front of the camera and those who operated it.
Although numerous photographic reports on Roma and Sinti claim to be documentary in nature, in reality they are thoroughly staged and reflect the photographers’ wishes and projections.
The history of Roma photography is characterised by strict hierarchies. Nevertheless, those portrayed were not entirely powerless. There are numerous examples of how they actively participated in the photographic process – and developed their own agency.
Money, cigarettes or other gifts – in exchange for expected images. Photographs of Roma and Sinti were often taken in the context of (mostly unequal) exchanges. A case study shows how these exchanges took place.
Photographers who took pictures of Romani people often engaged in a form of aggressive voyeurism. However, they were not always successful; their intrusiveness met with resistance and fear from those being photographed. It was often young women who tried to escape this photographic intrusion.
In the years around 1930, photojournalism experienced a heyday in illustrated newspapers and magazines. Many picture-text stories dealt with the portrayal of Roma and Sinti.
The high-circulation pictorial press of the interwar period played an important role in the development, consolidation and mass media dissemination of photographic images of Roma and Sinti.
A famous photo by André Kertész from 1921, analyzed by Roland Barthes in “camera lucida” (1980), shows how much the photographic figure of the “gypsy” functions as a wishful idea and projection.
Founded in 1926, the Roma school in Užhorod in eastern Slovakia was considered a media sensation during the interwar period. It became a kind of magnifying glass for a wide variety of projections of a culture imagined as different.
Photo reports on the Roma school in Užhorod provide an excellent example of the visual strategies of exoticisation. Photos and texts stage a seemingly unbridgeable distance between Western bourgeois civilisation and the Roma way of life.
From the mid-19th century onwards, photography played a central role in the visual representation of the minority. The photographic positions of photographers, their perspectives, interests, and photographic results varied greatly over the years.
Until the mid-20th century, there were very few photographs that challenged the established visual regime regarding Roma and Sinti. Three of these images, which suggest alternative visual solutions, are presented here as examples.
