Behind the scenes: Canadian photojournalist Ed Ou documents the Roma community in Hungary and Canada

Click the image above to watch the video on the CBC website

Through the use of photographs and narration, Canadian photojournalist Ed Ou reflects on the Roma community and the complexity of their relationship with far right-wing nationalist groups in Hungary.

He also discusses how it felt to be a Canadian welcoming a family of Roma refugees to this country.

Ed Ou describes himself as a “culturally ambiguous” Canadian photojournalist and his career started when he was still a teenager by covering the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the fall of the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu, Somalia while he was studying in the Middle East. He first worked for Reuters and the Associated Press, covering a wide range of news stories in the area. He was also an intern at the New York Times. After university, he moved to Kazakhstan, where he documented the tragic consequences of Soviet nuclear weapons testing in Semipalatinsk.

In 2011 he won a World Press Photo award for his photo essay about four Somalis who risk their lives crossing the Gulf of Aden to Yemen to escape conflict and poverty in the Horn of Africa. Recently, he has been covering the wave of uprisings that have rocked the Arab World.

[via cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/roma/]