The show is the work of the Polish-born photographer Terri Potoczna. Potoczna, who lives in the UK, posted an invitation to Roma on the internet to participate in the project, which she dubbed the ?gypsy kings photography experiment?. The result is I am a Gypsy, a series of twelve portraits in which the subjects are dressed and posed as those in paintings from Boccaccio, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Botticelli, Van Eyck, Károly Lotz or Frida Kahlo.
?Apart from producing aesthetically satisfying images, my wish is to examine the tension which a person experiences when struggling to choose a role for himself/herself when majority society in its need to feel secure in the presence of stable archetypes (always stronger in the case of political and economic instability) subtly undermines any attempt to break free of seemingly inevitable destiny,? Potoczna explained in her internet invitation.
Beneath the portraits are questions and answers: ?the enemy is the stranger?, ?I like the person I have come to know, that is me?. These phrases suggest there is still hope for a communal culture, if everyone participates and nobody is left on the sidelines.
Potoczna recorded interviews with her subjects as she photographed them, and some could be heard at the opening of the exhibition.
It is important to note that the show is being hosted by one of the centres of Jewish culture in Budapest, but it might have a greater healing effect on society if it were brought to a bigger public.
Author: Eszter Götz
