Forgotten Doms / From Syria to Gaziantep
Who are Dom People ?
DOMs, whose roots are in India, speak the Domari language. It is an ethnic community with links to European Romani and Loms in the Caucasus. DOMs live in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Palestine. Although most of them have to settle down, they still lead a nomadic life due to their economic activities.
The arrival of the Dom community from India to the lands of the Middle East dates back 1000 years. Despite all the harsh possibilities of the Middle East. They managed to preserve their language and culture.
They earn their living by professions such as forging, informal dentistry, seasonal agricultural work, basketry, fortune-telling, birding, and musicianship.
Doms were without identity for a long time. The reason for this was that they did not have a settled life. However, those who settled down acquired an identity. Doms transferred all their cultures in Kurdish. Dom women have been doing medicine and informal dentistry since ancient times, and they covered the teeth of many people in the region with gold or silver. In addition, all Doms are tattooed, except for the new generation Doms. The tattoo is an important symbol for the Doms.
Total Population : 1.8 million
My Observations
In the photography work I carried out in Gaziantep in the past years, I contacted a group consisting of Abdal and Dom groups. The Dom community, who were marginalized even during their stay in Syria, had difficulties in the refugee camps after the war due to ethnic and religious reasons, or they were not accepted at all.
I photographed the ensemble, which stands out with their unique clothing styles, away from the classical refugee photographs, inspired by my fashion photography background, in the cultural clothes and living spaces of their own world. Thanks to the photographs taken, we were able to contribute to the needs and education of a small number of them. Rather than describing such a community, which has been marginalized within refugee groups, a little further from the painful picture, with photographs that will reinforce the suffering they have already experienced. I chose to photograph them with expressions that would not offend them and would not remind them of the process they went through.
The Forgotten Doms collection including a photograph that won the World’s second prize at the University of London Human Rights Consortium.
more info: Forgotten Doms on my Official Page
