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Like many Americans, his perception of this group of people was limited to stereotypes from old television shows that portrayed wild and boisterous bands of men and women wearing loud clothes and gaudy jewelry, drinking, dancing and disrupting as their wagons rolled into town.

His first trip to Central Europe opened his eyes to the reality of the Roma, an ethnic minority that is impoverished, misunderstood and neglected -- a stark contrast to the way much of the world perceives them.

"These people aren't traveling anywhere," says Kollasch, a photographer and technical services director at the library of University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa. "They have nearly 100 percent unemployment and they subsist on welfare payments. They have tough lives."

He has traveled to Slovakia several times since 1994, when he first visited the country while participating in an educational library project. Slovak friends eventually introduced him to the people and culture, and Kollasch began taking photographs of Roma families in 1999.

A collection of Kollasch's photographs, "Roma Foto Projekt," will be displayed at Point Park University beginning Tuesday and running through Nov. 12. The exhibition also will feature photographs by his collaborator, Sandy Carter, a photographer from Victoria, British Columbia.

The Western Pennsylvania Slovak Cultural Association is sponsoring the photography exhibit, coordinated by Joe Senko, the association's executive director, and board members Joseph Bielecki, a South Side attorney, and Andrew Conte, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review staff writer.

Senko is one of only 10 Slovakia honorary consuls in the United States. His job is to assist visitors from Slovakia and promote the Slovak culture to people in this country. Senko says there are nearly 800,000 people of Slovak heritage living in the United States.

Conte, who spent time in Slovakia last summer on a German Marshall Fund of the United States journalism fellowship for the newspaper, says Pittsburgh offers a good setting for the exhibit "because it remains home to more Slovak emigrants and their descendants than any other U.S. city. The Slovaks call Pittsburgh the 'capital of the second Slovakia.'"

He says the exhibition is timely in that "Slovakia entered the European Union last year and has to show that it's treating the Roma fairly. There are many Gypsies living in Eastern Slovakia, generally in ramshackle settlements outside of each town."

Kollasch says what intrigues him most about the Roma is their spirit and ability to find joy in their lives despite their daily struggles and prejudice against them. Many of his photographs are of smiling faces of children. While Slovak families have an average of one to two children, Roma families tend to be large, with as many as five or more youngsters, he says.

He chose to shoot the photos in black and white, he says, so that people would not be distracted by colors when looking at the images depicting the poor living conditions in Roma homes and neighborhoods. The 30 photos in the show focus primarily on Svinia and Jarovnice in eastern Slovakia.

To help increase public awareness about the plight of the Roma, a panel discussion will be held Tuesday at Point Park's Downtown campus. Those participating in the discussion will include Conte; Miriam Vypalova, a member of the Slovak Embassy in Washington, D.C.; and John and Katherine "Kitty" Goodish.

John Goodish is executive vice president of operations for United States Steel Corporation in Pittsburgh. He and his wife lived in Slovakia from 1997 to 2003, where he was president of U.S. Steel Kosice, a steel manufacturing plant in the town of Kosice. The couple also did volunteer work for local orphanages there.

U.S. Steel has hired some 200 Roma for jobs at the steel plant, according to John Goodish.

"You have to try and win their confidence one day at a time," he says. "For us to offer employment to them is a start. They can be a hard-working people. They have attributes that we need to appreciate."

Kollasch says his goal in the exhibition is basically to try and effectively tell the story of the Roma. "It's one that many Americans don't know," he says.

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