Rare and First Edition Books from Buckingham Books

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Photograph Album Of Of Gypsies VARIOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS

Photograph Album Of Of Gypsies

VARIOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS

Other works by VARIOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS

Publication: Privately published, 1923-1973, N P

Various photographers, various places, 1923 – 1973. Twenty black & white photographs; various sizes, approximately 8” x 10”; most of them with manuscript and typed, pasted-on notes to verso; a few backgrounds crudely touched-up with paint; overall in very good or better condition, with occasional creases, nicks, and slight ripples. A beautiful archive of gypsy photographs, created by various news agencies and spanning 50 years, it documents various, significant, noteworthy moments of gypsy life, primarily in the United States. One of the memorable ones depicts King John, Head of the Romany gypsies in the US and husband of Queen Eleanora, at his wife's funeral at Mount Olivet Cemetery (Maryland) in 1924, interestingly enough, puffing contentedly on a pipe. Another shows the ruins of a shop-restaurant authorized to sell 3.2 beer in 1933, decimated by a bomb set by bootleg racketeers (presumably gypsies), after the owner had refused their offer to sell their "alley beer." A third showcases a group of female gypsies, in jail, arrested for a money "blessing" racket, i.e. switching a large sum of money with a wad of newspaper, while "blessing" the money for good luck. Most of the women are happily smoking cigarettes, while incarcerated. A fourth shows a "traditional" gypsy funeral, at which men pour wine, beer, and whisky over the tombstone. A fifth documents four Polish gypsies crying, standing next to New York Attorney General Joel Greenberg in 1973, after an astonishing affair of shuffling them back and forth across the ocean 5 times and their repeated refusal of asylum on both continents. Photographs also include gypsy kings, queens, princesses, weddings of 14 year-olds, "Wanted" gypsies, etc. Photographs are noted as being taken in Michigan, California, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Oregon, Texas, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, etc. and one in France.

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