Review “These brilliant photographs, capturing the dialectic between desire and disappointment, anxiety, and comfort, ultimately remind us of our own continuous rites of passage as human beings. Roma’s photographs are truly saving graces.”-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Director of African-American Research at HarvardAs seen in: The New York Times Sunday Review "Artistically stunning, pensive and thought-provoking, Thomas Roma's photos are representative of our diversity, of the vast differences that separate us, the enduring struggle uniting our hearts, and the carnal and communal nature of our collective desires." —Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter"In The Vale of Cashmere does what all good photobooks should do; it reveals a subject and then wraps around it a full and rounded narrative. The work carries a history of New York that predates and parallels the gay rights and civil rights movements. Through its comprehensive and careful description, the book becomes the authoritative portrait of a previously near-invisible subculture. It revels in the unexpected intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class." —Pete Brooks, Medium  Read more About the Author Thomas Roma is a two-time recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships (1982 and 1991) and a New York State Council for the Arts Fellowship (1973). Roma's work has appeared in one-person and group exhibitions internationally, including one-person shows with accompanying books at The Museum of Modern Art, NY and the International Center of Photography. He has published 13 monographs including:The Waters of Our Time (powerHouse Books, 2014) with an accompanying text by Giancarlo T. Roma, Enduring Justice (powerHouse Books, 2001) with an introduction by Norman Mailer,On Three Pillars (powerHouse Books, 2008) with text by Phillip Lopate, and his 2010 powerHouse Books publication Dear Knights and Dark Horses with an introduction by Alec Wilkinson. He has taught photography since 1983 at Yale, Fordham, Cooper Union, and The School of Visual Arts and in 1996 became the Director of the Photography Program at Columbia University School of the Arts where he is a Professor of Art. Roma lives in Brooklyn with his wife Anna and their son Giancarlo.G. Winston James is a Jamaican-born poet, author, essayist, and editor. A former fellow of the Millay Colony for the Arts, he holds a BA from Columbia College, Columbia University and an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is the author of the poetry collection The Damaged Good: Poems Around Love and the Lambda Literary Award finalist collection Lyric: Poems Along a Broken Road. Read more
