Untitled 1992

This untitled photograph by Thomas Roma captures a quiet moment with a muted palette of blacks, whites, and grays. It feels like a personal memory, a world we are being let into, a world of intergenerational bonds. The texture is rich in detail, look how Roma balances light and shadow to create depth and tone. The surfaces of the clothes, hair and faces appear soft to the touch, yet there is a raw directness in how Roma captures his subjects. Check out the wood grain in the door, how it mirrors the woman’s hair! Look at the different ways Roma uses line – vertical, horizontal, diagonal – to give the composition movement. The light catches the baby’s face and draws your eye like a spotlight. Roma's work shares a sensibility with that of Garry Winogrand, both capturing life as it unfolds with an intuitive and honest eye. In art, as in life, it’s all about who is looking, and how.