TITLE: Skin and language. The double burden

The photo series compromises images made in one of the most neglected parts of Romania. This isolated space gives home to one of the smallest and most cohesive Hungarian gypsy community in the country. Excluded from the society because of their ethnic origins and the use of the Hungarian language, this micro-social group must endure daily harassment, racism and financial and psychological instability. Their double burden – the linguistic and racial discrimination – dooms them to live as outcasts in the periphery of small villages in South-Romania, while surviving the everydays via committing smaller crimes like stealing plants and animals from villagers. For this community, there is no future, nor is there any hope for integration. They live in constant fear from the police and the local Romanian population, while the younger gypsy generation is rejected to be admitted to schooling and has no rights to social benefits.
Because of their isolated and endangered social and psychological position within the Romanian society, this community has never let anyone to capture them. I feel lucky that after so many years of volunteering with other gyspsy communities, the head of the group gave me permission to do so. Through the portray of individuals from the group, the series intends to express the wrath, anger and disappointment of the community with the aim to draw attention to one of the biggest taboos of the Romanian – and Eastern European – discourse: racism and ethnic stereotyping.

AUTHOR: Laszlo Nagy (Romania)

I am an amateur photographer from Romania who aims at capturing the moments.