Customer Reviews

Found in Brooklyn

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
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I thought this would be worth adding to my collection of American commonplace photobooks but it turns out to be a very mediocre set of photos. I'm sure any Brooklyn residence would say it looks just like the place though anybody could have taken the photos for that reaction.

There are just too few images that made me stop and study what was on the page. For instance on page nineteen there is a really wonderful shot looking down a street with a tree almost central in the image with its branches segmenting buildings and sky, the sidewalk disappears into the distance. The whole photo is really rich in detail but unfortunately that is about the only one that works for me.

Another problem with the book is the total absence of any information about the forty-four photos, apart from the date they were taken. Roma spend many years taking these scenes and frequently I just wondered what was happening in this or that photo. It seems just too easy to see something visually interesting, photograph it and that's it, fine if it's an abstract image of shapes or texture where the photo is really no more than a pattern but photos of people and locations mostly need some sort of explanation for them to really work for the viewer.

I think it is worth adding that this is the second book I've bought recently of Roma's work, both have been new copies and cost very little and in the case of the Brooklyn book it was less than the mailing cost.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Starting in 1974 photographer Thomas Roma began capturing a diverse range of images for 16 years from architecture to daily life on the streets of Brooklyn. "Found in Brooklyn" was my introduction to Roma's keen eye for detail and superb usage of light, rendering Brooklyn in a warm white glow that reminded me most of the deep-blue skies of the Southwestern United States (Though I would agree with another reviewer that his usage of light has Brooklyn depicted as though it was located somewhere along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.). It still remains one of my two favorite photography books from his work, and the one which shows the substantial breadth and depth of his subjects. Stylistically, Roma's work in black and white reminds me most of Stephen Shore's contemporaneous color landscapes, with regards to his usage of both the frame and placement of subjects; surprisingly there isn't much here that more closely resembles Lee Friedlander's work (It is a surprise only since his father-in-law is Friedlander.).

In "Found In Brooklyn," Thomas Roma focuses his camera on this borough of New York that has been his home for most of his life. Shooting in a tradition that is most noticeably reminiscent of Lee Friedlander's work from the 60s, Roma has an individual style all his own. Taken over a sixteen-year span beginning in 1974, Roma's photographs alternate between odd juxtapositions of street life, and eccentric and eclectic architecture and environments. Another thing Roma has found in Brooklyn is a wonderful, warm light that makes you feel like you're across the Mediterranean and not across the East River. While Roma has now dedicated four recent books to a variety of subjects on Brooklyn life, none of them is as comprehensive and all-encompassing as this title.