In today’s Europe, increasingly marked by social tensions and hostility towards the different, forms of discrimination and isolation are steadily growing. Along borders as well as within countries, minorities are marginalised, enclosed within physical and cultural spaces of exclusion and confinement, be they camps, detention facilities, or “ghettos”.

The Roma, Sinti and Gypsy communities in Europe number between 10 and 12 million people, equaling the whole population of Belgium. Despite being the largest minority in Europe, 80% are at risk of poverty and suffer more discrimination than other groups. Stolipinovo, the so-called largest Roma, Sinti and Gypsy “ghetto” in Europe, is located on the outskirts of Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second largest city.

The limiting stereotypical use of the word “ghetto” may reflect the marginalisation that characterises places like Stolipinovo, but imposes a distorted image, obscuring the complexity and heterogeneity that exists in the district, with coexisting different ethnic identities, religions, social classes, patriarchal structures and LGBTQIA+ communities.

Once an ordinary neighborhood, Stolipinovo became a ghetto after the fall of Communism and privatization of industry, as Gypsies lost jobs because of racial discrimination. Today, besides being present in Bulgaria long before the country’s independence in 1908 and claiming to be the last heritage of the Ottoman Empire, the approximately 80,000 residents of Stolipinovo are social outcasts, facing social, housing and health problems at critically dangerous levels.

Surrounded by an atmosphere of increasing identitarian nationalist sentiments, Stolipinovo stands as a portrait of systematic discrimination in Europe in the 21st century.

Award-winning freelance photojournalist based in Berlin and Northern Italy, focusing on environmental and social justice, food production, migration, contemporary issues, with a background as emergency nurse, volunteer medical personnel in humanitarian crises, and academically qualified linguist. She has worked for a number of publications, investigative journalism agencies and no profits. She contributed to ‘Hidden – Animals in the Anthropocene’, awarded ‘Photography Book of the Year’ by POY (2021). Her project Zor was exhibited at Visa Pour L’Image photojournalism festival 2022. Her work was awarded by British Journal of Photography (2023), SIPA (2022), Px3, TIFA, MIFA, BIFA, Kolga Tbilisi (2022), Global Billboard Project (2021), among others. Recipient of the European Environmental Journalism Fund grant for an ongoing environmental project, since 2023 she is represented by the photography agency Panos Pictures.