In Prison Air: The Cells of Holmesburg Prison

Inspired by a photographic project he did for Steve Buscemi's film Animal Factory, Roma (whose last book, Sicilian Passage, was photographs of his ancestral Sicily) returned to Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison to photograph its vacant cells. Szarkowski drafts Kafka, Conrad, Homer, Caesar, Napoleon and 19th century sailors into his rolling free-associative foreword, though what, exactly, he's trying to communicate remains a mystery. There is more insight, thankfully, revealed in the scrawled prayers, calendars and sketches expertly captured in Roma's photographs. One image preserves a sketch of a front door with a prominent handle labeled ""pull"" and a plaque drawn near it with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, from which Roma also takes his title (""The vilest deeds like poison weeds / Bloom in prison air / It is only what is good in man / That wastes and withers there""). The cell walls, all marked by sheets of peeling paint and ethereally lit by overhead air shafts, run the gamut from unadorned to murals featuring icons like dragons and barely dressed (and large-breasted) women. Several tell stories, such as the drawing of one man shooting another (""Ah, I'm hit,"" reads the dialog bubble next to the wounded character's head). Readers would do well to skip the foreword and immerse themselves instead in Roma's captivating photographs.