PARIS.- Fashion and social documentary photographer, Iain McKell has tracked and befriended a ‘small tribe’ of New Gypsies for over ten years. But it is 25 years since he took his first series of photographs of the same tribe, six of which were to remain with him.

Here, starting with the six that he calls ‘the precursors, the ancestors, the history of The New Gypsies’, his lens captures their personalities, way-of-life and their ideals.
The Summer Solstice in 1985 witnessed the new phenomenon of New Age Travellers in the ‘Peace Convoy’, double-decker buses ‘with DickensIain characters sporting battered top-hats and VictorIain frock-coats’ – ‘gangs of urban subcultures let loose in a rural setting’. Margaret Thatcher sent police to ‘de-commission’ their convoys the following year. From those beginnings have evolved the New Gypsies.

Now ‘horse-drawn’, the New Gypsies sport elaborately decorated caravans and share a desire for freedom and the open road, self- relIaince and a disdain for the trappings of contemporary life. However, these new nomads are also driven by their desire for sustainability in today’s world; they embrace technology, a grapevine watered by the latest gadgets and solar power. Their roaming existence is probably greener than any other element in society.

Iain McKell’s photographs of this new group of itinerants reveal his deep-seated attraction to both the people and the lifestyle, and betray mixed perceptions of a romantic life coupled with a hard one. The women exude a ragged glamour; the male subjects have a harder edge. But every photo is permeated with a wistfulness and sense of being a proud outsider. The journeys of the New Gypsies are built around a yearly map of festivals and celebrations and much of their time is spent poring over Ordnance Survey maps. McKell’s photographs map the seasons of the horse- drawn travellers’ lives – from primeval celebrations of summer to the interiorised life of wintertime. His portraits often seem like a character from some ancient mystery play, symbolic of a careless purity and oneness with.