"Brooklyn Gardens, Roma's first book is a limited edition of thirty original photographs made between 1972 and 1980, some within walking distance of his house and others in more distant neighborhoods. Roma arranged to have the book bound by Tiv Tov Press, a Hassidic binder of Jewish religious material. He ushers us into his garden book by quoting Robert Frost's A Mood Apart which concludes
For any eye is an evil eye
That looks in onto a mood apart
These words have provocative connotations for any photographer. Aren't all photographers, after all, looking in onto a mood apart? Roma has compared his work as a photographer with gardening, an activity in which one loses a sense of others and creates another world, relying on inner and outer eyes that are, presumably, not evil. "
——Susan Kismaric, excerpted from the introduction for Pictures for Books