These photographs were taken mainly in the separated Romani settlements in East Slovakia between 1962 and 1968. Koudelka returned from one of these trips two days before the August 1968 Soviet invasion, which he photographed extensively. Some of these photographs were smuggled out of Prague to the Magnum Photo agency and were published anonymously, for fear of reprisals, in the Sunday Times Magazine. In 1970, Magnum helped facilitate a three-month exit visa, and he left Czechoslovakia to photograph Romani people in the West; he did not return and instead sought asylum in England, becoming an associate member of Magnum in 1971 and a full member in 1974. He has spent much of the time since then wandering through Europe and parts of the United States, attempting to document the spiritual and physical state of exile.

First edition; (268 x 298 mm, 10½ x 11¾ in); black & white photographs, prefaces by John Szarkowski and Anna Farova, essay by Willy Guy, production crease to corner of one preliminary page; black endpapers, brown cloth-covered boards, titles stamped in silver on spine and to upper side in blind and in silver, minor shelfwear, photo-illustrated dust-jacket, printed black, text in grey and white, light wear to edges, laminate lifting a little along bottom, a very good copy; [136]pp.

The Photobook: A History I, p230.