Claire Martin Photography

Sex and Gender studies: Travellers

This work was produced as a part of Danube Revisited - The Inge Morath Truck Project". It has spent the last three years touring Europe as part of the Fundacion Telefinica production, Danube Revisited.  

In 2014 I travelled the length of the Danube River over a 5 week period visiting every Roma community I could find along the way. I travelled alone with no common language and visited each place for only a few hours. Depending on chance encounters and body language allowed me to photograph without an intellectual agenda, and to allow a common humanity to bring about a series of fleeting intimacies with strangers.  

 

 

  • The most impressive stallion at the horse and cart races in Archar Bulgaria.
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  • Arriving at the lake in Plavecký Štvrtok, I am surrounded by posturing young men trying to gain my attention, suggesting I give them blow jobs, laughing. I capture this quiet moment of a young man watching the spectacle unfold after a dip in the water.
  • I was taken on an adventure on Lake Văcărești in a small wooden boat to catch turtles with this lovely boy.
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  • Lake Văcărești was originally part of a failed hydrological infrastructure plan to connect Bucharest to the river Danube. Eventually nature reclaimed this space and it has remained hidden behind high dykes, in the middle of one of Europe’s densest cities. It is a virtually uninhabited space, save for a few Roma camps deep in the wetlands.
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  • A family of Roma Boys nap in their tent like home away from the crowds at Lake Văcărești.
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  • After stealing a boat and going for a swim in the river I sunbathe with a couple of young men from Goveđi Brod.
  • It is hot and clothes are few. I return the relentless male gazes, with my own.
  • We sunbathe after swimming. I am just a strange old foreign lady, I don't know why these gorgeous young men are entertaining me. It must be boredom.
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  • A carving on a wall in Tulcea.
  • Young men pace around me, curious, while I photograph them.
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  • Selemetya Gypsy Quarter
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  • A feral dog eats a fish left behind by fisherman on the banks of the Danube in Oltenita.
  • Just one of the many dicks I had the unsolicited pleasure of viewing. Perhaps with my camera I am a predator too, taking the perpetrators by surprise in an awkward, thrilling reclamation of my vulnerability. Woman, alone, after dark. The camera as a weapon of self defence. I shoot. I laugh. The {quote}situation{quote} is disarmed.
  • A group of  boys surround me in Selemetya Gypsy Quarter, Ruse,  the Danube River. I take the quiet ones photograph.
  • On the road, watching the sky.
  • In the riverside Roma slum of Goveđi Brod , I find a group of 3 young men to spend the afternoon with. We hang out till evening where we smoke pot and dance to pop music on our phones in a derelict fishing shack by the river. I feel like a teenager again.
  • A young boy with swagger, from Goveđi Brod, gives the camera a cheeky smile.
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