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Sicilian Passage
“ Sicilian Passage is a timeless view into a landscape and its people. Thomas Roma’s eloquent photographs of Sicily are like beautiful poems about a land that he loves.”
—Mary Ellen Mark
a land of mystery and myth. Inspired by stories told by his mother’s family, famed documentary photographer Thomas Roma left his native Brooklyn for Sicily in search of his roots in 1977. Photographing abroad on a Guggenheim Fellowship, Roma spent months at a time over the next fourteen years traversing the island, challenging himself to connect with a culture and a lifestyle completely foreign to his experience as a New York City street photographer.
In Sicilian Passage , Roma taps into the timeless essence of Europe’s agrarian past. His photographs of the familial homeland are untainted by stereotypical notions of Sicilian culture. Instead of old ladies in black veils gossiping on the stoop, Roma’s images are lyrical odes to the country pastoral. Through his lens, we are transported to another land where nature and the climate have tamed its inhabitants into a slower gnarly ancient trees grow haphazardly in the crop fields; marble ruins erupt from the hillsides; shirtless young shepherds tend to their flocks under a ruthless Mediterranean sun. Sicilian Passage is an ode to the mysteries of the timeless in “The Island in the Sea of Light.”
“Tom told me that as a child he used to try to dream of Sicily as he drifted off to sleep. Lying in bed, he’d picture mountains that were higher than the Berkshires he had seen in upstate New York, and a sea that was bluer than it was at the beach at Coney Island. He’d imagine a place where the sun was brighter and where figs grew bigger and sweeter than they did in his grandparent’s backyard in Brooklyn. Sicilian Passage is an attempt to reimagine that dream.”
—Anna Roma
—Mary Ellen Mark
a land of mystery and myth. Inspired by stories told by his mother’s family, famed documentary photographer Thomas Roma left his native Brooklyn for Sicily in search of his roots in 1977. Photographing abroad on a Guggenheim Fellowship, Roma spent months at a time over the next fourteen years traversing the island, challenging himself to connect with a culture and a lifestyle completely foreign to his experience as a New York City street photographer.
In Sicilian Passage , Roma taps into the timeless essence of Europe’s agrarian past. His photographs of the familial homeland are untainted by stereotypical notions of Sicilian culture. Instead of old ladies in black veils gossiping on the stoop, Roma’s images are lyrical odes to the country pastoral. Through his lens, we are transported to another land where nature and the climate have tamed its inhabitants into a slower gnarly ancient trees grow haphazardly in the crop fields; marble ruins erupt from the hillsides; shirtless young shepherds tend to their flocks under a ruthless Mediterranean sun. Sicilian Passage is an ode to the mysteries of the timeless in “The Island in the Sea of Light.”
“Tom told me that as a child he used to try to dream of Sicily as he drifted off to sleep. Lying in bed, he’d picture mountains that were higher than the Berkshires he had seen in upstate New York, and a sea that was bluer than it was at the beach at Coney Island. He’d imagine a place where the sun was brighter and where figs grew bigger and sweeter than they did in his grandparent’s backyard in Brooklyn. Sicilian Passage is an attempt to reimagine that dream.”
—Anna Roma
84 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 12, 2016
This is an entrancing book of photographs of scenes of rural life in Sicily, made in the late 80s. There are photographs of wonderful gnarled olive trees, silent hillsides, flocks of livestock grazing in fields of wildflowers, and fierce people - obviously struggling to eke out a living in a tough landscape, with many hills - much of the land is not really suitable for agriculture, but usable for grazing. The message is that the standard of living at least when these photographs were made, approaches subsistence level - with many signs of any scraps, metal, random goods, being carefully kept and re-used because it must be difficult to afford anything new. Thus, the seeming piles of junk - or the cobbled together hutches, stones holding tin roofs down and so forth. Whatever material can be salvaged and re-used is, because there is scarce money, because the land is so harsh.
If you've ever wondered about what life is like (or was like in the 80s) in Sicily, this book contains glimpses of life in this seemingly harsh land. These photographs in and of themselves are wonderfully composed works and the book can be appreciated from a purely aesthetic standpoint.
The afterward by the photographer's wife provides context for the photographs - as well as how Roma went about finding the seemingly random scenes that he photographed. This is a book you will want to return to again and again - looking at its photographs, and reading the afterward evoke what it must have been like to walk through this wild countryside.
If you've ever wondered about what life is like (or was like in the 80s) in Sicily, this book contains glimpses of life in this seemingly harsh land. These photographs in and of themselves are wonderfully composed works and the book can be appreciated from a purely aesthetic standpoint.
The afterward by the photographer's wife provides context for the photographs - as well as how Roma went about finding the seemingly random scenes that he photographed. This is a book you will want to return to again and again - looking at its photographs, and reading the afterward evoke what it must have been like to walk through this wild countryside.
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April 15, 2012"He looked at everything around him--the houses and humble gardens, the aluminum siding and wrought iron fences--the things people use to express belonging to a place, as much as the place belonging to them" (80). This is Thomas Roma talking about Brooklyn, but it could also be about my neighborhood in the Bronx.
July 7, 2010
Another book of photographs, this time of mostly rural Sicily, in the 1980s, with a few shots of Palermo. Pretty rustic with lots of people standing around tending goats. Looks pretty poor for the most part.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews