Between 2018 and 2019, I returned to Stolipinovo, a large Roma neighbourhood on the eastern side of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. It is often described from the outside through poverty, overcrowding and social exclusion. Those conditions are real, but they are not the whole story. I wanted to photograph a place where families, occupations, languages, faiths and celebrations coexist, and where everyday life continues amid serious difficulties.
The neighbourhood grew in part around apartment blocks erected during the socialist period, with smaller houses and improvised structures filling the spaces between them. Its population is frequently estimated in the tens of thousands, although precise figures vary. Inadequate infrastructure and unequal access to services have long affected residents. Yet Stolipinovo is not one uniform community: Turkish-speaking and Bulgarian-speaking residents, Muslims, Christians and different Roma groups live here with distinct histories and customs.
Horses and carts were among the first sights that caught my attention (photograph 1). They were used for travelling, carrying families and transporting materials, and sometimes appeared in the most unexpected corners of the neighbourhood. The wheel also occupies a place in the international Roma flag: a red, sixteen-spoked chakra against blue and green fields. Its interpretation includes movement and the historical journey of Roma communities, whose distant roots are traced through linguistic and other research to the Indian subcontinent. This does not mean that every present-day custom has survived unchanged from India; Roma traditions have developed through centuries of life across different regions.
Wedding processions brought a different rhythm to the streets (photographs 2, 9 and 14). A bride and her companions moved through the neighbourhood in festive clothes, turning ordinary roads into spaces of ceremony and public recognition. Music, movement and the presence of relatives made these occasions communal events rather than merely private celebrations. For a photographer, the changing relationship between the procession and the surrounding street was as important as the formal ritual.
One evening before Ederlezi, I met Hanife and Şengül, two Turkish-speaking young women on their way to the Maritsa River (photograph 3). They explained a practice they called Martofal: personal objects were placed in water associated with the festival, and wishes or hopes were attached to what followed. The custom recalls the wider Balkan practice of drawing fortunes from objects placed in water, familiar in several communities under different names. Rather than assign it a single origin, I understood it as part of a shared regional language of spring, renewal and expectation.
Ederlezi, observed around 6 May in many Roma communities, marks the arrival of spring and is associated in different settings with St George's Day, Hıdırellez and local seasonal traditions. In Stolipinovo, I saw families dressed for the occasion walking towards the Maritsa (photograph 4). Water, greenery, visits and festive meals can all carry symbolic weight, although the precise meaning of each act depends on the family and community. In another gathering, relatives brought food, drink, music and a sheep to retrieve a baby who had been ceremonially taken to another household (photograph 6). I record the sequence as it was explained to me, without assuming that the practice is universal among Roma.
Religious life offered another view of the neighbourhood's diversity. Some residents belonged to Evangelical Christian congregations, where Sunday worship included music and collective participation (photograph 7). Elsewhere, family ceremonies followed other religious or customary frameworks. These differences matter: there is no single Roma religion, just as there is no single Roma language or way of celebrating.
In an area associated locally with the Burgucu Roma, I encountered a reconciliation ceremony between two families before a marriage (photograph 9). According to the explanation I received, a pregnancy before the wedding had caused a dispute, and the gathering sought to restore relations. Musicians performed while the families met publicly, turning the occasion into a visible declaration of peace. I also visited small metalworking workshops (photograph 11), where craftsmen shaped agricultural tools and horseshoes by hammering heated iron. Such skills speak of labour, adaptation and continuity rather than a picturesque survival of the past.
Another occasion was Bango Vasil, celebrated by some Roma communities in mid-January and often associated with the old-calendar New Year (photograph 13). Stories about Bango Vasil and a protective bird vary across communities; in the account I heard, a rooster played a role in protecting children during an epidemic. In one local celebration a rooster was awarded by drawing lots and was not slaughtered. It would be misleading to treat that account as a rule for every Roma household. What stayed with me across these visits was the variety of practices, the willingness of people to explain them, and the complex social life that remains largely invisible in stereotyped descriptions of Stolipinovo.