Irish Travellers are traditionally a nomadic group and counting roughly 40.000 people in Ireland and the UK. I have spent well over two years living with the Keenan and Collins families in Finglas, Dublin. First as an intrusive outsider but later I gained their trust spending a lot of time with them. Living this close to the families, this project didn’t only become a photographic exploration of a disadvantaged community, it became a document of what life is like for Travellers today and their struggle for retaining a collective identity while falling victim to the pitfalls of modern society.
Sebastiaan Franco graduated from the MA Photography program at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2019 with a self published book on two years spent living with Irish Travellers. During his studies he also worked on assignments both in Belgium and abroad. He also self published his BA project about hooliganism culture in his city of Antwerp, Belgium. At this moment he's working as an interior photographer, designer and 3D artist for various real estate agencies, pursuing his own documentary projects in his spare time.
