Pierre Gonnord: Gypsies

This is a stunning collection of images portraying Gypsy people from throughout renowned photographer Pierre Gonnord's career. Large-scale, highly detailed, and dramatically lit, with dark, blank backgrounds; noted French photographer Pierre Gonnord's images recall the paintings of Goya, Caravaggio, Velasquez and other old masters. Gonnord's subjects belong to communities on the margins of conventional society - homeless urban youth, gypsies, tattooed Japanese gang members, and others. Gonnord's art transforms each into a vision of compelling, unexpected beauty and dignity. Face to face with the viewer, these evocative, eloquent portraits are intended, says the artist, "to narrate unique, remarkable stories about our era. Sometimes hostile, almost always fragile, and very often wounded behind the opacity of their masks, they represent social realities and sometimes another concept of beauty." This magnificently illustrated volume brings together images of Gypsy people - the artists most portrayed social group - captured by Gonnord throughout his career.