The cover for Cristina Salvador Klenz’s forthcoming photography book.
Thrilled to share with you the title and cover for our next book, Hidden: Life with California's Roma Families (April 2022) by Cristina Salvador Klenz.
Brown Paper Press' first photography book, Hidden pulls back the curtain on an ethnic minority virtually unknown to most. Enslaved for hundreds of years in Eastern Europe, the ancestors of the American Romanies photographed in this book faced discrimination, imprisonment and untold trauma simply for being who they were. Since then, the entire population has been repeatedly reduced to "Gypsy" stereotypes — fortune tellers, travelers, thieves — a reason so many of this country's 1 million Romanies remain closeted from the mainstream.
And, yet, behind closed doors, their cultural identity remains very much intact. Their inherited trauma (evident in their low rates of literacy and high rates of poverty) sits alongside unshakable ethnic pride (evident in the richness of their language, music and customs.)
Romanies in American are an understandably private population, and Klenz is the first person ever to get close enough to produce a photographic collection documenting their lives, struggles and celebrations. It's a real honor to help bring this book into the world, and my greatest hope is that the work will, in some small way, help tear down harmful stereotypes about a population that deserves to be seen and appreciated on their own terms.
I love the cover we chose — featuring two brothers with huge, inquisitive eyes — for Hidden, and hope you do, too. For this one, we were lucky enough to work with designer Evan Backes, who designed I’m Dyin’ Here for us back in 2015. We ended up with several cover options, and — thanks to Evan’s skills — there wasn't a weak one in the bunch. Take a look. What do you think? Which would you have chosen?
