Jan Yoors first encountered Romani people at the age of twelve in his native Belgium. With his parents’ permission, Yoors spent the next ten years of his life immersed in a Romani community. Yoors’ account of his experiences, The Gypsies, was published in 1967. Following World War II, in 1950 Yoors emigrated to New York City where he established himself as an artist, writer, filmmaker and photographer.
Known for his images of communities in Harlem, the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, Yoors’ images of Romani people, made between the 1930s and his death in 1977, were recently exhibited in the exhibition Mondes tsiganes at the Musee de l’histoire de l’Immigration in Paris.
