1996 MOMA / AbrahmsIntroduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
In 1990 Thomas Roma began a series of photographs of houses of worship in Brooklyn, once called the "City of Churches." The project was decisively changed when the pastor of a black Christian congregation invited Roma instead to photograph the Sunday service itself. Over the next three years Roma made pictures of more than on hundred and fifty services in fifty-two black Christian churches in Brooklyn—a year of Sundays. Come Sunday presents a generous selection of those pictures. An essay by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., introduces the photographs by exploring the many dimensions of "The Church" in African American life, history, and culture.
"Come Sunday is an extraordinary exploration of an aspect of American 'inwardness' by a distinguised photographer—one of our very best—whose moral sensibility informs his brilliantly suggestive, lyrical, and knowing visual narrative."
——Robert Coles
——Cornel WestClick on thumbnails to view larger images.
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