ZAHYBSKAVES – Depicting of gipsy identity by Peter Lančarič

There was a cheerful mood in the house. Singing, dancing, uncontainable energy, human warmth, openness and children´s joy. In the room which serves as a living room and a bedroom for a large household, there was an unplanned gipsy festivity going on…

Those days were intensive, full of feelings, experience, perceiving of human destinies and mutual sharing. Experiences that are hard to be described in words. The issue of the Romany identity resonated so deeply in Lančarič that through his photos he provides an intimate and subjective visual statement of a Romany family from Hybe, a village in Liptov. This statement metaphorically captures their existence in their own world. Nevertheless, his visual feeling does not need to be described. Every photographer reflects themselves through their photographs. Peter Lančarič is a person who perceives things in depth. He entered the world – intimate space of a Romany family which was strange to him at first but, in a sense, it became close to him.

At first sight, the photographs radiate the feeling of quiet melancholy, emptiness and gloominess, the feelings which accompany these people, either consciously or unconsciously, through their lives.

Lančarič, as a receptive young photographer, managed not only to feel these people and get close to them but also to express the compassion and sympathy through the staged portraits. The curtain hanging directly from the window of the Hybe´s personage metaphorically represents the coexistence of all the residents of the Hybe village in Liptov regardless of their ethnicities.

I cannot tell, whether my subjective perceptions were recalled only by Peter´s photographs or also by the fact, that we shared these intensive moments…

Andrea Boldišová

The topic of the photographs is the coexistence of the residents in Hybe village, in Liptov. At first, they welcomed us with certain mistrust and by looking at us from behind mostly traditional and bobbin lace curtains or draperies which are characteristic for this region. The curtain became a kind of poetic metaphor of being in one´s world. The portrayed Roma people are paradoxically set on the street and near their houses. This public space belongs to all the residents of the village equally. On one hand, the staged portraits of the people behind curtains outdoors represent the people preserving their privacy, identity and subtlety and on the other hand by their witting posing they open themselves to the surroundings. The curtain which was used came from the local parsonage. It was symbolically unhooked from there and it represents an imaginary connection of all the residents of Hybe village regardless of their ethnicities.

Peter Lančarič