Originating in India and Pakistan, the Gypsies and Romany have been wandering the earth for over a thousand years, disdaining frontiers and borders. While many of them have settled in one place after contact with the West, they’re all travellers at heart, thinking nothing of hitting the road for many kilometres at a time to go on a pilgrimage or attend a party. Although the collective unconscious has long since consigned travellers to the status of thieves and scroungers, they themselves are proud of their ancestral traditions and their way of life, giving us non-nomads a real lesson in freedom and being close to nature.
The long journey that I made at the age of nineteen in search of the Gypsies was my photography school and a school of life. They taught me that there’s always a solution, that we must never give up, that there’s always hope. It wasn’t an easy education but one in which I learned my lessons well and gained knowledge of humanity.
Hans Silvester
EXHIBITION
Hans Silvester: Sur la route…Tsiganes et Gitans
Exhibition producted by Graphistes Associés
Patio de Camargue
49 chemin de Barriol
43200 Arles
France
BOOK
Hans Silvester: Sur la route…Tsiganes et Gitans
Editions de la Martinière
240 pages
220 x 270 mm
ISBN: 9782732445120
40.50 €
