In Prison Air: The Cells of Holmesburg Prison
by: John Szarkowski and Thomas Roma

Hardcover. NY, powerHouse, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 96 pages. In 1999, photographer Thomas Roma found himself within the walls of Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison, one of the most notorious prisons in the United States, doing a special photographic project for Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory. During downtime Roma wandered through this nineteenth-century fortress, walking in and out of many of its seven hundred or so cells. After Holmesburg's inception in 1896--on the occasion of which one Philadelphia reporter warned, "Abandon all hope all ye who enter here"--it quickly became the prison for Philadelphia's worst criminals, eventually packing up to five prisoners into six by eight foot cells designed for single-occupancy. After leaving the site, Roma found his mind often inhabiting the space of the prison with its halls of flaking paint and graffiti-covered cells. Overwhelmed by the evidence of the lives spent inside those small rooms, Roma returned to photograph on his own, creating the images now collected for In Prison Air: The Cells of Holmesburg Prison.