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Documentary Series

Damian Lemański

Photographer

Damian Lemański

Kids of Lunik IX

It is a series of photos of children and teenagers living at Lunik IX – a district in Košice, Slovakia, almost entirely inhabited by Roma people. Among few thousand inhabitants live more than 1,000 children.


They live in unworthy conditions, sometimes with a dozen or so family members, nestling in twenty square meters. Children living at Lunik IX live like in the ghetto, but often do not see it like that, playing with joy and smiling.

The Roma are by far the most long-term discriminated against minority in the EU. Eighty percent of Roma in the EU still live below the poverty line in their country. Every third Rom lives in a building without running water, and every tenth in a building without electricity. Every fourth Roma child and every third Roma child live in a household where they experienced hunger at least once in the previous month. [European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2017]

Damian Lemański

Damian Lemański ​ is a Polish photographer based in Warsaw. He is mainly interested in man and his place in today's world. Often takes up subjects that do not attract media attention, but are particularly consistent with his sensitivity and tender view of the world. The everyday life of small communities is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him. Through photographs, Lemański looks at the moral condition of people, by which he means above all the treatment of each other and responsibility for the community and the world. In 2008 Damian finished the European Academy of Photography in Warsaw - a school of Izabela Jaroszewska PhD. He has participated in photography workshops in Poland, Hungary and USA. ​