Thomas Roma — Sanctuary

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 4to. 81 pp. Very Good+. Hard Cover. Black cloth boards. Dust Jacket Very Good. B&W plates throughout. ISBN: 0801869552 9780801869556. In Sanctuary, acclaimed photographer Thomas Roma offers a compelling sequence of 52 black-and-white images that document the varieties of religious experience in Brooklyn as seen in the borough's sacred architecture. Juxtaposing pictures of grand Gothic and Romanesque churches photographed at a distance from backyards and alleys with more intimate views of smaller places of worship housed in converted storefronts and dilapidated brownstones, Roma subtly calls attention to issues of history and class, revealing how successive waves of immigrants have shaped Brooklyn's urban landscape and how the African-American and Hispanic communities living there now have worked to make these neighborhoods, culturally and spiritually their own. .