Photographs from Atanas Georgiev's collection.
Extent: 26 photographs.
Condition of original material: Medium quality of the photos. Some photographs have spots.
Custodial history: The photos are family owned.
Author(s)/Creator(s): Unknown photographer.
Arrangement: The pictures have been stored in an album withought order. The owner of the pictures was responsible for their arrangement. They were not arranged chronologgically.
A note about terminology: Some of the material in this collection relates to Цигани [Tsigani / Gypsy] communities. Since 1989, these communities are often referred to using the term ‘Roma’. However, not all members of these communities accept the term Roma or identify as Roma. In Bulgaria, this is a heterogeneous community that comprises different groups with different ethnic identification (Romani, Bulgarian, Turkish or Rumanian), mother tongue, way of life, religion, and occupation. Moreover, the original material in this collection pre-dates 1989, when the term ‘Roma’ was unknown in Bulgaria. For these reasons, the term ‘Gypsies’ is used to describe these communities in the catalogue rather than ‘Roma’ because this more accurately depicts the identification of the communities recorded in this collection at the time the documents and photographs were created. The Protestant missionaries who worked among this population and whose results are related to the material in the collection, also used the term 'Gypsies'.
