It was to the district of Ciudad sin Ley (Lawless City) in a village in the South of Spain that Jeanne Taris set out to meet a community of Andalusian gypsies. Following her series of portraits taken on the street, the photographer has come to be accepted, and has captured scenes of life, unvarnished, taken on the spot - a maker of walking-sticks “vara Gitana” (gypsy canes) at work; fleeting moments of tenderness between a father and his son; euphoric young adolescents dancing the Flamenco; shared moments at family mealtimes.

So many images and scenes of life or interiors, where the gypsy world finally and without restraint opens the doors on its daily life, with an innate sense of theatrical representation. Shunning superlatives, Jeanne Taris considers again the enclosed life of these men and women with their long-hidden, shadowy history.

Clément Sauvoy