In an atmosphere of generalised awakening of nationalist sentiments, in Europe a growing urgency to preserve national identity burns along but also inside borders, forcing minorities into ghettos. Roma communities count more than 11 million people. Stolipinovo, Bulgaria, is the biggest European Gypsy ghetto. Historically subjected to racial discrimination, 80,000 inhabitants with Turkish and Muslim cultural roots, a strong community-based social structure and system of traditions live in squalid decay and daily social emergency: a portrait of systematic discrimination in Europe in our century.
Selene Magnolia is an award-winning IFJ NUJ freelance documentary photographer. With a background in grassroots activism, her work spans issues relating to social justice, anthropology, human rights, feminism, environment, and food production. Raised in the Italian Dolomites, Selene lives between London, where she studied at the British Academy of Photography, and Berlin. During the past years she covered, among others topics, environmental crime, migration, border brutality on land and the in the Mediterranean, and has traveled over one and a half years to the biggest Gypsy ghetto in Europe.
Awards LUCIE Foundation x 2
SIPA
A37
Photo Is:Rael
MIFA
APA
The Independent Photographer
Featureshoot's Global Billboard Project
Life Framer
Prix De La Photographie
