Come Sunday

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 one 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.

A dramatic collection of photographs depicting the services of black churches in Brooklyn, Come Sunday illustrates the power of faith in a community riddled by unemployment, poverty, and crime. Focusing on the shine of a tooth, the thickness of a braid, the resolved tension of a hand clutching a bible, Soma uses subtle textures to mirror the diversity and complexities of the everyday humanness of his subjects. Within the walls of these sanctuaries, members of the congregation chat, crack smiles, doze, weep, cheer, and, of course, pray, all the while exhibiting extraordinary faith that, for many, lifts them above life's seemingly impossible burdens.