A társadalom peremén

Curatorial Note

Published in conjunction with the Néprajzi Múzeum's landmark 1989 exhibition of the same title, this bilingual Hungarian–German photographic volume presents 121 archival images selected by ethnographer Péter Szuhay from the museum's extensive photographic holdings. Focusing primarily on the first half of the twentieth century, the photographs document Roma life in Hungary through housing and settlement, itinerancy, occupations and traditional trades, family life, material conditions, and relations with the wider society. Rather than claiming to constitute a representative ethnographic survey, the publication makes visible a dispersed and previously little-known visual record of Roma communities held within a national museum collection. The exhibition and accompanying volume are particularly significant within the history of Roma representation in Hungary: conceived amid growing anti-Roma prejudice in the late socialist period, they sought to bring Roma history and cultural experience into the institutional space of the museum while challenging reductive and discriminatory representations. The publication became an important precursor to Péter Szuhay's later work on Roma history, visual culture, ethnography, and museum representation.