Stumbling across At Home with the Furys one day when he was browsing through the TV schedules, photographer Frederik Ruegger was transfixed.
A massive boxing fan, Gypsy King Tyson Fury gave a snapshot of his life and heritage as part of the Traveller community.
A German based in Berlin, Frederik, 32, was so fascinated that he booked a flight to Manchester and made his way to the famous Appleby Horse Fair – Europe’s largest annual gathering for Gypsy and Traveller communities held in Cumbria every June – armed with his trusty 28mm camera.
Passing a table laid out as a CD stall, he heard a traditional folk song ‘I’m a Stranger in this Country’ playing and decided it was the perfect title for an extraordinary book of photographs, shot over two years between 2022 and 2024, at horse fairs in the UK and Ireland.
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He says: “I have a huge interest in boxing. I’ve been boxing myself for years. And yeah, I admire Tyson Fury a lot, not only for his sport, but also for his personality. A Stranger in This Country seemed like a good title, as Travellers can I think feel a bit like that…and so was I.”
Once he was at the fair, being German among mainly UK photographers, Frederik says, made him a “bit of an outsider” and, therefore, relatable to the travellers. He says: “Maybe that’s something that connected a little bit.” Frederik made numerous visits to horse fairs in order to shoot his book, for which he was given unprecedented access to the Travellers and their lives. He says: “I grew close with one specific family that also invited me to stay with them on the campside.”
Explaining how he gained the community’s trust, he says:”I think if you show up somewhere, no matter if it’s a Traveller community or anywhere else in the world, and you have good intentions and you are honest and open, then in 99% of cases you will receive the same thing back and that’s exactly what happened.”
His shots are incredibly candid and have a retro feel about them, as the Traveller traditions have remained the same for years. He says: “I’m shooting with a 28 millimetre lens, which is a wide angle lens, so you need to be very close to your subject. “I was allowed to take pictures whenever I wanted and everything was as natural as possible. People kind of forgot that I was still there.
“But there are a lot of photos that never made it into my book. I usually did my trips and sent the photos to the families. I got feedback and, of course, some of the photos, maybe were not what they expected them to be. I never published anything when they said, ‘we don’t want that.’”
And his respectful approach to the Travellers has paid off. Frederik forged lasting friendships and hopes to return to the horse fairs and focus his lens on his pals again. He says: “I will definitely go back. Maybe the more interesting [photographic] series might be seeing the kids grow up and grow old, the same as me, and to show the new generations come through.”
Shooting only using analogue equipment, meant he risked ruining his films whenever he went through airport security. But he says modern cameras are “too sharp.” And the outcome was definitely worth the extra effort. Saddened when he witnessed suspicion and sometimes hostility shown towards travellers by people who didn’t understand their unique way of life, he says: “These kind of communities should be able to follow their traditions and keep their identity. It needs to be preserved.
“I feel honoured to have captured their world. It’s their world, I was just the one framing it, but it belongs to the traveller community. My proudest moment was getting to know and be trusted by all these wonderful people.”
I am a Stranger in This Country by Frederik Ruegger is published by Kehrer Verlag and available from all good bookshops.
https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/
