The problem of the observer has long been a key concern of philosophy, the theory of literature, art and psychology. By contrast, mainstream sociology, anthropology and social history have so far examined the possibilities of the observer mainly in the context of visual representations; it was not until three decades ago that the relationship of image and text, of the gaze and the thing gazed at, first appeared on the horizon of these disciplines. Studying the representations of Roma and Sinti in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, one can observe that Central European societies create their own sexualised and feminised ‘blackness’ through ‘savage’ groups and individuals, and their faraway and nearby colonies. In the Panopticon of Central European modernity, the ‘Gypsies’ become pendants of the African and Asian ‘primitives’ of Western Europe. There is, however, a significant difference in the representation of ‘savages’ imported from the colonies and that of the ‘native savages’. The ‘Gypsy’ became an inherent part of the national image during the construction of the Central European nation states. Ideas defining the visual representations of the Roma travelled between Central and Western Europe. The presentation will discuss these travelling ideas and images, as well as the notion of the colonial and the emancipatory gaze in the history of Roma representations.