Untitled 1993

This untitled photograph was made by Thomas Roma, but I don’t know when, exactly. It has an amazing, almost hyper-real quality, like a dream half-remembered. Look at how Roma plays with light and shadow; it’s like he’s carving out these figures with the starkness of the contrast. The way the light falls on their faces and hands, each person absorbed in their own world within this shared space. You can almost feel the weight of the books they hold, the texture of the fabric on their clothes, the very air in the room. It reminds me of the work of early modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz, how they used light to find beauty in everyday life. And notice the composition, how the figures are arranged in this almost rhythmic sequence, leading your eye deeper into the frame. It’s like a visual poem about community, contemplation, and the quiet power of shared experience. Art is so cool because it shows us how many ways there are to see.