Roma Pride and Identity Through the Lens of Andrej Pešta

#2 min Emília Rigová, Andrej Pešta

25. 4. 2025

Andrej Pešta, self-portrait, 1970s.
Andrej Pešta, self-portrait, 1970s.

On Thursday, May 29, we’re opening an exhibition at the Fotograf Zone gallery dedicated to an extraordinary figure—not just in Roma culture, but also in the visual history of Central Europe: Andrej Pešta. His passion for documenting the world—and himself—has become a unique visual archive of Roma life during socialism. This archive has now been given a new frame by curator and visual artist Emília Rigová. The exhibition Andrej Pešta – Baro frajeris is part of this year’s Khamoro Festival of Roma Culture and will be on display at the gallery until September 18.

Fotograf Zone Gallery ExhibitionRoma Culture

Baro frajeris sounds like a friendly wink—in the Roma context, it’s a way of showing respect to someone who has style, confidence, and standing. And that’s exactly who Andrej Pešta (1921–2009) was: an amateur photographer, writer, activist, and artist. At the exhibition, you’ll see him in a range of everyday situations—working in the garden, by the pool, surrounded by family, in intimate and ordinary moments. In short, as someone in control of his own life, with a personal vision and the ability to create. He lived a life that, for many Roma during socialism, felt like an unattainable dream—and for the majority society, an unimaginable anomaly.

At a time when Roma were usually portrayed either in a romanticized or a stigmatized way, Pešta’s images were something close to revolutionary. To portray a Roma person as a subject with hobbies, with pride, with an everyday life—that was (and perhaps still is) a radical act. Pešta captured the ordinary: family gatherings, moments of rest, quiet celebrations, and everyday scenes that would otherwise have gone undocumented. In the 1960s, he became actively involved in the Roma ethno-emancipation movement connected with the Union of Gypsies-Roma, becoming one of the few to visually document the movement’s inner workings. His photographs were not taken from an external, anthropological perspective—they were the gaze of someone within the community: deeply personal, authentic, and often gently ironic. Pešta’s body of work forms a unique visual archive of Roma life during socialism—a period often represented exclusively from the perspective of the majority.

The exhibition at Fotograf Zone doesn’t focus solely on the documentary nature of Pešta’s photographs; it also emphasizes the body—specifically the Roma body (Pešta’s body), appearing both in front of and behind the lens. This curatorial concept was developed by visual artist Emília Rigová, bringing a fresh, layered perspective to the exhibition.

 

Andrej Pešta - Baro frajeris
Fotograf Zone Gallery
Opening: 29 May, 18:00
Duration of the exhibition: 30 May - 18 September 2025
Curator: Emília Rigová
The exhibition is part of the Khamoro Festival of Romani Culture  and was created with the support of the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno.
Fotograf Zone Gallery ExhibitionRoma CultureSelfportrait

Emília Rigová

(*1980, Trnava) is a visual artist and researcher at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica. Her works reflect her personal identity as a woman, Roma, feminist, intellectual, and activist. They often address history, collective memory, and particularly the archaeology of the Roma culture. In 2018, she became the laureate of the Oskár Čepan Award.

Andrej Pešta

he was born to an Italian father and a Maltese mother, but his true home became the Roma community of Carpathian Ruthenia. Orphaned in childhood and swept along by the currents of history and circumstances, he found himself, as a teenager, east of the Slovak border—in a land where he learned the Romani language and began to understand that identity can be something deeply internal, not necessarily inherited.In his youth, he fought as a tank operator in the Czechoslovak army and later as a partisan in Italy. After the war, he stayed true to the ideals of equality and returned to Czechoslovakia. He worked as a laborer, a workshop manager, and eventually as a Deputy of the City National Committee. At the same time, and perhaps precisely because of these experiences, he documented the lives of Roma people through the lens of his camera.He spent the most important years of his life in Spišská Nová Ves. There, where he married an Olah Romani woman and became a part of the community. Over time, he took on the role of both  witness and chronicler. His photographs weren’t taken from a distance. They came from within, from inside homes, kitchens, courtyards, celebrations, and everyday moments. They show Roma people simply as people who live, love, create, work, and dream.Pešta was more than a documentarian; he was a living memory. His work stands as proof that even the quietest voice can be heard, if it speaks the truth.

Fotograf Zone Gallery

Andrej Pešta – Baro frajeris

#6 min Emília Rigová, Andrej Pešta

Andrej Pešta – Baro frajeris

Fotograf Zone Gallery ExperimentRoma Culture

Andrej Pešta (1921–2009) was an exceptionally multifaceted individual who balanced social activism, visual art, and literary inventiveness. In the introductory essay to the publication O Fotki, Jana Horváthová, director of the Museum of Romani Culture, reflects on both her personal encounters with Pešta and his remarkable versatility. She remembers him as a man who, as early as the 1960s, appeared in photographs alongside prominent Romani intellectuals and leaders such as Tomáš Holomek and also recalls the words of Romani scholar Milena Hübschmannová, who described Pešta as a talented storyteller and writer with a vivid imagination.