Thomas Roma’s series "In Prison Air," published in book form in 2005 is a collection of architectural photographs of the decrepit and abandoned Homesburg prison in Philadelphia. The history of the prison from its opening in 1896 to its closure in 1997 is a bleak one, inmates overcrowded in cramped quarters, unfavorable and unsanitary conditions, and medical experiments performed on the undereducated and illiterate prisoners. Roma said, "I think the pictures in ’In Prison Air’ are as beautiful as I’ve done. But look close—you want to spend a minute in there? They’re torture chambers." This dichotomy between an ugly space and the beauty that exists when unbiased light strikes walls or objects is the common element between Roma’s and my own work in my Motel series. The elements take their toll on the prison buildings, the moisture and the bleak light begin to peel the walls over time. The rectangles, the smooth sheets of paint waste away as organic bark, both humans and nature innately turn the mechanized barren space into a layered dialogue between people and their space. In a similar way my images speak of the rectangles- of the order of the room and how we are conditioned to react to the simplicity and the ‘safety’ of clean lines. The geometry of a room, the sill of a window, the edge of the bed, the sheet, the very shape of the photographic frame is counteracted by the unintentional organic effect of a person on a room- disorder, entropy, manipulation of a static object into a less geometric shape. Liquid spills not in rectangles, it spreads over a surface and has soft curves. The evidence of the patrons in a motel room is in the way they wear out the cloth sheets and the stains that develop and the waste that can be disposed of.
In Roma’s work the elements have tampered with and aged the space as well as the layers of meaning that emerge from multiple inmates inhabiting the space. The motels I am photographing are older but not in disrepair, but I do tend to focus on aspects of the rooms that are not intentional (if the intent is to be ‘new’ looking and clean) that portray the wear over time- a physical reminder of the other patrons who have spent their nights there in the anonymous space.
Both Roma’s work in ‘In Prison Air’ and my own work for the Motel series are focused in small quarters on what aesthetics may be found. Roma’s photographs firmly sets you in the space, it is very concrete and you know you are looking at a wall or a room’s corner. You admire the peeling paint, the curves of the ceiling as if you were viewing an old European chapel until you realize where you are, a space with a stench and a draft. And the realization that up until two years before Roma took these photographs- inmates were inhabiting the prison. This horror and unsettling feeling is coupled with the beauty. Roma has pulled out shots and mine are closely cropped, focusing on one object and its near surroundings. I investigate how this trash becomes an abstracted form when situated within the linear elements of a smaller space. How for a moment you can forget that this is the ‘left behind’, that which makes the room less sanitary and more human, and be caught up in a beautiful shape.
Light and texture are the defining features of the photographs of the prison cells and the motel rooms. The shapes and forms are illuminated by the casted glow from the window. Smooth, dirty, rough, stained- full of the organic shapes that grow and peel out of the rectangles that we press into a space. The rectangular sheets are crumpled by human feet, they wrinkle and the texture of the wood, the plastic, the cotton sheet, the porcelain are my main focus as well as the colors and subtle variations of form.
Prison cells are outfitted with only the most rudimentary furnishings- a bed or cot, a toilet, a sink. Cells are anonymous and standardized and I cannot help but think that the inmates need to express themselves and communicate in some way with the world, even if this world has been reined in in scope and size to the 6 x 8 foot room, is intense. People naturally desire their surroundings to reflect their interests, their idea of beauty, their identity. Incarceration seeks to take all those away from a person and place them within the confines of a barren scape. They scrawl on walls, they hang up posters, they personalize their space and so affect their small environment. Roma’s photographs communicate this to us, the human need to alter our surroundings.
In the same way a motel is not one’s personal space and belongings and personalization are essentially ‘out of place’. The motel
is intentionally meant to be anonymous and unobtrusive, to not offend, to only serve its purpose of maintaining its neutral goal of providing shelter. What we leave behind (and the unseen what we take with us) is very human- our affects speak of who we are and how we consistently interact with objects.
Thomas Roma’s ‘In prison air’ is what inmates leave behind on walls and on floors and how they affect the space as well as how the elements degrade a space, in essence “the aesthetics of incarceration”. Both our work touches on a subject or an object that would rather not be thought of- to others I am photographing ‘garbage’ or what is out of place in an organized establishment, Roma focuses on an undesirable population and their rooms. The focus on the ‘artifacts’ or ‘features not naturally present but a product of an extrinsic agent, method, or the like’ lends us to a greater understanding of the inhabitants and the great similarities between our needs and our spaces. My work is a record of the abstract shapes that appear out of people’s disorder. 
