Thomas Roma: Higher Ground

by Ellen Handy

The photographs in this series by Thomas Roma were taken in and around the elevated trains that run through the heart of Brooklyn. They capture pockets of time in the lives of the people who travel the trains, going to the beach at Coney Island or coming home from school, as they look out onto empty streets and backyards or entertain their own daydreams. In the photographs, a man studies a newspaper by the light of a window blurred with scratched-in graffiti, two young people kiss, another couple kisses and eats, a child sleeps in his mother's lap. By the light of this higher ground, Thomas Roma has created candid portraits of people marking their own passages through time.

Genres: Photography

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Declan · Rating 4 out of 5]

We can look. No, more, we can stare as we never would if we too were passengers on these trains. Thomas Roma doesn't just look, he photographs the people who sit opposite him on elevated trains as they move with easeful deliberation along the New York tracks.

These passengers are caught between places, between existences, their purposes suspended. They are, in many cases, unexpectedly tender: a man with his hand on his well-fed son's knee while the boy holds on to his mother's arm. People sprawl about, some with heads on lover's laps or with limbs casually intertwined. Children - ever curious - look out of windows; adults defocus, move to the limitless space inside their minds ("What did he mean by " I thought you'd have known" ?". " I should have said it. Should have, should have. Fool, fool, fool").

Some sleep, some talk, some worry, some eat. It is possible to read every emotion on those faces for we are, surely, designed for that: reading the intentions, the stifled impulse, the barely suppressed tension.

In the middle of the book, like children, we look out of the windows for a while and notice the shadows allocating light; the house that someone thinks of as home; the unoccupied funfair; the three trees diverting our eyes from a drab wall. The people who live along here have stopped seeing the train, its sound is barely noticed, exposure is no threat.



Back inside, the effulgence of summer sun blurs the details of those who sit by windows. This lambent light is a fleeting brilliance, soon extinguished by indifferent buildings.

All this is fleeting, of course. Once these people sat just there, and now they're gone. That beautiful woman with the sunglasses on her head, those sharply dressed men; the man who muses all alone and the woman dressed for somewhere better. A shadow moved, a lens clicked. They were gone, and caught forever.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of photos by Thomas Roma of train riders on S. Brooklyn's elevated lines, taken prior to 1980- an era when I still lived in Brooklyn and also took these trains often if not daily.

The span of about 30 or 40 years time separates separates today's viewer of the photos from the very different world of today. It's interesting to see the changes, big and small between the world of the subway as it was prior to the going-over of NYC by the Republican administrations of Giuliani and Bloomberg - a world that seemingly reveled in casual self-expression, uninhibited sprawl, the anything goes world of un-airconditioned spaces leading to the sparsest clothing in the summertime - which is when the photos were taken - and the sort of heat-dazed looks, and outright torpor, drowsiness, that set in after an hour or so of riding on the subway, on the unending ride from Manhattan to Bensonhurst or even Coney. There were far fewer Asians in NYC in the 70s, and the Black and Latino population - the men especially - seemed to be on a cusp, perhaps - as the contradictions were about to boil over, especially in racially charged conflicts in Bensonhurst, Howard Beach, and finally Crown Heights - all events that set the stage for the reaction of the Giuliani-Bloomberg years. The era of the 70s was a continuation of the social revolution of the 60s, and was also prior to the poison of the AIDS era, which set in around 1980. It was an era of innocence, chaos, economic stagflation, as the hopes and dreams of the idealistic 60s seemed to vanish into self-destructive ugliness, after the dreams didn't pan out for all.

You can "read" the photographs of the riders as you might "read" the riders in real life - at least as I've always tried to "read" riders (that is,when I'm not intently reading a book to avoid eye contact) - try to figure out their occupations, their life stories, where they are coming from or going to, simply by studying their faces, their clothes, their bags. The photos in "Higher Ground" were all taken during the off hours, or maybe on the weekend, on cars that weren't crowded so that riders could sprawl or lay down on seats (of subway cars that are no longer in service). I remember those subway cars, that had windows that could still partially pop open, in case the air conditioning didn't work; cars that you could walk between and enjoy some air if the air conditioning didn't work, cars that afforded a view onto the oncoming track from the front of the front car. This is all impossible today given the design of the driver cabin taking up the entire width of the car.

Other observations - of the pre-digital era: Nobody was staring at a device, only one rider had ear-buds listening evidently to a Walkman or radio. Peoples' eyes weren't glued to devices, and peoples' eyes told the story of their lives: Boredom, worry, sleepiness, affection, the story of time and space passing by, looking out the windows as streets passed below - the eternal "dance" of the subway riding experience, simultaneously an interchange with other riders getting on and off the train, negotiating a spot to stand in or if lucky sit down, and "living" or experiencing life as it flowed by outside the window. A very few people were reading - most were either just sleeping or staring off into space, or staring at others on the train. The classic experience of riding the train to the City to go to work, or go on a job interview or go shopping, and then riding the train back, the long train journey over the Manhattan Bridge or through a tunnel under the East River (depending on the line) writing a story on the rider's face of tedium, another day of struggle, of dealing with kids or a job that was slowly wearing them down, by the time they were out in Brooklyn, the story was grim: Was the cost-benefit analysis of giving so much time up to the train ride, really worth it? Was the cost-benefit analysis of giving so much of themselves up to a pointless job perhaps, worth it? What was worth it - the significant other you could intertwine with, the kids having fallen asleep, life itself - its ups and downs? Wasn't the whole story of life's struggle on display each time you took the train, your story, others' story - your misery, others' misery - the unending reality that it all simply led to yet another day, or month, or year of the same grinding struggle? No wonder the streets were disfigured with graffiti in the 70s, and scratchiti rendered the train windows opaque. There was no suitable arrangement worked out - people were really at one anothers' throats. The world really did explode in riots when the blackout occurred in the late 70s, but it was also being destroyed steadily with every uptick in crime. Paranoia was prevalent and the worry of a world that had become unsafe is also etched on the faces of the riders. That is one way of looking at these photos - although it's hard to say what those faces are thinking, hard to reconstruct what life was like, must have been like for them, back in the 70s, an era of low rents, but high crime incidence.

What were their thoughts 40 years ago? Is the thought pattern of Brooklynites always the same, continues consistently about the same few things, no matter what the economic conditions? Does the train indelibly shape thoughts, according to the unvarying iron rails, curling into Coney?

All of these photographs were of scenes that were familiar to me, from the long years of living in Brooklyn and riding those trains up until the end of the 80s. You will never really know what it is to be a Brooklynite until you've ridden the train on a daily basis from an outlying area - without the distraction of an electronic device, but maybe with a book, or a supply of books and snacks and water, since the trip takes a long time - to Manhattan, and then back again, spending perhaps 4 hours of your life going back and forth to work. You then ride the train on the weekend, the long weekend days of summer, to the beach - without much thought to absorbing too much solar radiation, and spend an aimless day soaking up the sun. You might venture into the polluted water of Coney or Brighton Beach - beaches that once had few if any amenities. You might buy some cheap food, and become dazed from the sun exposure, and then having had what you consider fun, you head back to your humble apartment, dazed, possibly burned by the sun despite the effort to tan, and then get ready for another week at a pointless job, with the only thing to look forward to when your next vacation is coming up. The few bright spots of life, are very few, given time and energy constraints - as so much of your life is consumed by long hours at work, and the long trip on the train. You might spend more time on the train than you do awake at home during the week. The experience of being on the train begins to shape your thinking as no other experience can. You are forced to develop strategies to survive the train experience, yet it also affords you time to contemplate and reflect on your problems and life. That dichotomy must shape the thinking of all Brooklynites - it must have always been in effect and must still be in effect today: The train is a double-edged sword: It is tedious, boring, the train trip takes too long, is even more impossible during rush hour yet it does give Brooklynites time to think, and read. It's personal time the way it's not possible to have personal time at home (if you are sharing an apartment with others).

I'd recommend this book of photographs if only to catch a glimpse of a less gentrified time in NYC, prior to throwaway newspapers exhorting New Yorkers to develop subway etiquette, prior to rich people flooding the borough, and landlords raising rents accordingly - so as to catch the wave, take advantage, of gentrification. How could the people in these photographs survive in today's Brooklyn? What's happened to them in the interim? Were they living in apartments whose rents have now skyrocketed? Did they move away meanwhile - maybe they're living in Penna., in the Poconos, or in Philadelphia, or Miami? The black and brown skinned kids in the photographs, what did the future hold for them, once the Giuliani-Bloomberg administrations made NYC "safe" for the middle-class and rich to move to NY.

I rated this book three stars because although the photographs are evocative, and endlessly interesting, I didn't think much of the essays - although the introductory essay was better than the closing essay. If I only had to rate the photos, then I would have given the book a four-star rating. I am interested in finding out more about Thomas Roma, if he continued to photograph subway scenes in the interim and what his photos of NY scenes might be like today (if he is still in NYC, and still photographing people on the long ride out to Brooklyn on the train).