Romani
families in Portugal recently welcomed into their homes a
professional German photographer, Florian Schwarz, to take portraits
for a unique exhibition to illustrate the diversity of migrant
communities across Europe.
Schwarz’s focus on Romani
people, more commonly known in English as Gypsies and in Portuguese
as Ciganos, was the start of a year-long project. Having previously
photographed all over the world, his current project will take him to
four geographical extremities of the European continent – west,
east, north and south.
In
the Algarve, local contacts introduced him to different Romani
communities, the one in Porches long settled in municipal apartments,
the others in Albufeira transient camps. He encountered remarkable
hospitality, he said.
Originally
from northern India, Romani people have been on the move for many
hundreds of years. They first arrived in Portugal in the 15th
century and long thereafter were subjected to severe discrimination.
Full integration in Portugal continues to be officially encouraged,
but it is still slow. Most Romanis live in close family groups with
their own distinct cultural and social preferences.
As
an integral part of the country’s population, official government
statistics about Romanis do not exist. About 40,000 to 50,000 spread
across Portugal as a whole is thought be a realistic estimate by the
Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance.
Next
stop for Schwarz, 37, will be Bucharest, capital of one of the
continent’s most easterly countries, to photograph Romanian
nationals (not to be confused with Romanis) heading westward on
transport services to seek a better life in Germany, France and
beyond .
This
autumn he will be in Lapland to portray nomadic Sami people, the
northernmost indigenous group in Europe, who traditionally travel
around the Arctic regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia with
herds of reindeer.
His
final destination will be the Greek island of Crete where he will
focus on the workers who arrive in droves to take part in the olive
harvest that has been going on since ancient times.
Schwarz’s
intention is to depict aspects of migrant life very different to the
much televised mass movement of refugees from the Middle East and
North Africa in recent years.
He
uses a a small, modest-looking camera with a standard 50mm lens that
takes images, undistorted by wide-angle or telephoto lenses, as near
as possible to the way they are perceived by the human eye.
The
exhibition of his work will be held next year in four public venues
as part of a major cultural event in his home city of Konstanz in
southern Germany.
An exclusive preview
image taken in the Algarve, the only photo from the project so far
made public.
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