Well, what can I say ? Gypsies. Roma. Romanies. As some of you may know I’ve been working on and off over the years on a project of a roma camp in Romania; life, death, christenings, drunken parties, work, chores, laughter and many dead pigs, all in one camp. It’s been a labour of love. Many people ask “when will it be a book ?”. Well, one day is the answer to that. All good things come to those who wait. Why rush it ? It’ll happen, of that I have no doubts.

Of course Josef Koudelka published his infamous gypsy book, ‘Gypsies’. Many years ago. I’ve of course seen it, but never owned it. I refrained from buying it, not wanting to be too heavily influenced by it. Of course it is difficult not to know the work, but I don’t want to live with it.
( As a small aside, over the years when I’ve shown my gypsy work people always say “Do you know Koudelka’s gypsy work..?” If I’d had a pound for every time I was told that, I could have been rich enough to have gold teeth…)

Last night I was mooching about as I do, tinkering (if you excuse the pun) on the web. And I found the work of Andrew Miksys, and his book ‘Baxt‘. It seems he has also had a bit of thing with the roma, spending seven years photographing Lithuanian roma. I know how he feels I guess. I look at his portraits and I can imagine the surroundings, imagine the atmosphere, the people. I was impressed with his roma work, mostly when I see roma work it leaves me cold, but his I liked, I want to see his book in full. The below image, which whilst the guy in it might be cold, standing out there in the snow, I thought was beautiful. Very nice. Congratulations Andrew Miksys. Now to see if he wants to swap prints….

©Andrew Miksys, from ‘Baxt’.