Lithuanian-American photographer Andrew Miksys has been documenting the life of the Roma people in Lithuania for the past 20 years. According to him, the dismantling of the former Roma settlement in Vilnius was an unfortunate event that he talks about in a new exhibition at MO Museum.
Miksys’ photo series Baxt – meaning fate, destiny, fortune in Romani – has already had an eventful and long life. The author first started photographing Roma people in Lithuania in 1999. The series was released as a book in 2007. Miksys is currently working on the second Baxt book, exhibiting his work in Vilnius in the meantime.
Fateful encounter
Miksys grew up in Seattle. His father was born in Kaunas during World War II. As the Soviet army approached Lithuania, the family decided to move to the West and eventually arrived in the US.
In 1995, the photographer’s mother encouraged her husband and son to go to Lithuania, visit relatives, and discover the family history.
“Until then, I knew very little about the country. I didn’t know the language,” Miksys said.
Miksys returned to Lithuania in 1999 after receiving a Fulbright scholarship. He undertook to create a photography series about Lithuania. First, he walked around Vilnius and later started travelling around the country.
Back then, he met a Roma family in Vilnius Šnipiškės district. In broken Lithuanian, he asked for permission to take their picture.
At the time, he did not realise that the subjects were Roma, but they stood out from the homogenous Lithuanian society, Miksys said. According to him, this encounter was the beginning of the Baxt project.
When Lithuanian friends saw Miksys’ portraits of Roma people, they warned him not to deal with the “terribly dangerous gipsies”. But he was not deterred.
“If someone starts explaining how bad certain people are, I hesitate and want to see everything with my own eyes,” the photographer said.
He, therefore, decided to visit the Roma settlement, called taboras, in Vilnius Kirtimai district. At first, Roma people thought that Miksys was a journalist who wanted to discredit them.
“One man grabbed my arm and demanded to give him the film. I had never experienced that before. I agreed and gave him [the film]. Later, he and I became friends,” the photographer said.
Feared people
Over the next 20 years, Miksys travelled all over Lithuania, photographing local Roma people.
According to him, most of them had integrated into the local communities and spoke perfect Lithuanian. But when Lithuanians talk about Roma, they associate them with taboras and drugs. These negative images are mainly reinforced by the media, Miksys said.
In 2004, Vilnius City Municipality ordered the demolition of the Roma settlement in Vilnius. In its last days, Miksys visited taboras regularly to document a place that would soon be gone.
The author continued the series until 2021, taking one photo every year until the area turned into a wasteland that Miksys now calls “Chernobyl”.
The Baxt exhibition at MO Museum also features an installation made of planks, burnt logs, and other objects found in the settlement.
Portraits of Roma people who lived in taboras are displayed on old doors. According to Miksys, it symbolises the hospitality of the people who welcomed him into their homes.
Miksys creates in a style of directed photography. His subjects are put in front of the camera and look directly at the spectator.
“Such representation creates a kind of confrontation between the character and the viewer. It is more open, more sincere than observing a person without him knowing,” he said.
The photographer regrets that the Roma settlement in Vilnius was dismantled. He believes that a better solution could have been found, providing taboras residents with more freedom and self-government rights.
Miksys has also noticed that nationalist tendencies have become stronger in Lithuania over the past 20 years.
“When I see the way we treat some phenomena and minorities, I fear that there is a risk of going down the wrong path. We will become like Poland or Hungary that cannot be called democracies anymore,” the author said.
Miksys’ exhibition Baxt will be open at MO Museum in Vilnius until August 14.
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