There's Vladimír Horváth, a thoracic surgeon in Brno. And Terezia Fabiánová, an actress, playwright and poet who in her youth was a heavy-machine operator. And David Dudáš, who was ordained as a priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church at 22.

All ambitious and talented Czechs — and more. They are also part of an emerging Roma (Gypsy) middle class, as well as among the subjects featured in an exhibition by Chad Evans Wyatt, a photographer based in Washington, D.C. In his show "Roma Rising," Wyatt presents 44 black-and-white portraits of Czech Roma — educators, politicians, journalists — who belie the popular stereotype of Romany as poverty-stricken and unemployed.

Take Kateřina Holubová, an insurance underwriter for ČSOB Pojišťovna in Brno. "It's ordinary work — except for what she had to go through to get there," says Wyatt, noting that Roma of all intelligence levels were commonly put into schools for the mentally retarded. "Almost every one of [the people photographed] had to break out of that kind of situation and deal with all sorts of prejudice."

Wyatt's bond with the Czech Republic was forged in 1993, when he accompanied his part-Czech wife in a successful search for her family after contact was lost during the communist era. While in Prague, Wyatt began photographing Czech musicians and artists for the award-winning project 101: Artists in the Post-Revolution Czech Republic, a book and an exhibition that toured Europe and America for four years. A conversation with one of his subjects, Roma singer Věruška Gondolánová, planted new seeds when Gondolánová remarked that in her opinion, the Czech media systematically ignore Roma people of intelligence and accomplishment.

Wyatt understood this phenomenon, having grown up as the son of a black father and a white mother, both musicians. When he was very young, his parents and their friends — members of an invisible black middle class — would gather in their Manhattan apartment to plan civil rights actions. "People didn't think blacks were smart enough to go to college, let alone be doctors or lawyers," Wyatt says. "But intelligence is not the domain of any one ethnic group. It's quite astonishing what blacks accomplished during the civil rights movement."

For Wyatt, then, this project is a chance to revisit his own roots and carry the torch his parents lit. "Czechs might say, 'Who is this American guy to tell us what to think?' Yet I come not as an American guy but as a guy who's black."

Wyatt found many of his subjects through Charles University ethnographer Milena Übschmannová, who had opened similar doors for Josef Koudelka. In his seminal work Exiles, Koudelka followed Roma tribes all over Europe, making photographs renowned for their stunning compositions and often bleak emotional content. While it was a hugely influential project, it helped perpetuate stereotypes.

"Roma people say, 'That's not us,'" says Wyatt. "I wanted to break from that style — none of this ecstasy stuff, babies on a dirt floor. Rather, I chose to make images of respect and contemplation."

To that end, Wyatt photographed people in their work or home environments with studio lighting. Except that the light is lower and the subjects more natural, this work could be corporate portraiture — which Wyatt does for his day job, along with photographing celebrities and presidents.

Wyatt avoids all but the rarest hints of traditional Roma culture, such as traditional dress and musical instruments, in the photos. He only reluctantly allowed the late puppeteer Dagmar Kariková-Straková to be photographed with her puppets.

Some doctors and lawyers refused to be photographed. Wyatt speculates that for them, it was not convenient to be exposed as Roma if they can pass as white or to "make a public display of their identity for fear that they would be put in their place."