The Regard of the Gypsy: Ramón Zabalza’s gitano images and the visual challenge to the stereotype

Abstract

In sharp reversal of the orientalist image that adorns its front cover of impoverished gypsy caravans caught in a thunder storm, a jagged bolt of lightening cracking the darkened sky above and casting its desolate, silver light onto the scant earth below – an image which in the barrenness of its landscape and the darkness of its skies immediately seems to confirm the dramatically obscure and marginal position assigned to the gypsy in the modern, western imaginary – Ramón Zabalza’s book Imágenes gitanas (1995) has the stated aim of recounting a particular, individual perspective of gitano identity.