For they are my friends - Tapa dura

Tom Marotta's photographs seem heavy with unfashionable virtues. You don't ask them the kind of question you ask pictures nowadays -matters of texture, composition, symbology. You ask them the questions you ask people. Marotta is deeply concerned with his subjects; above all, the people he photographs. Yet he does not present these people for inspection; rather, he involves us in his relationship to them, their relation to him. One is caught up in the legacy of questioning and filtration between subject and photographer. It is a little like waking up in the middle of a love affair whose history you have forgotten. These pictures recording Marotta's affection for the people of Romania, carry the residues and resonances of earlier events and details in that relation. Eminencu's line aptly titles the book "For They Are My Friends" W. D. Snodgrass