Show & Tell

by Giancarlo T. Roma and Thomas Roma

"Two years ago, when I was eight years old, my dad asked me if I wanted to work on a project with him. He had an idea that I could write about some of his pictures for a book. I said I would try, but I wasn't really sure how the project would turn out or even how we would begin.... I began writing this book in January 2000 and wrote the final piece in December 2000. Looking back, I think my dad wanted me to see the world through his eyes from my perspective and write about it.... I feel as if my dad created a world for me by taking pictures. And while I was writing about a picture, I was living in that world. I hope you can come too." --Giancarlo T. Roma The idea to collaborate on "Show & Tell" with his son Giancarlo came to famed photographer Thomas Roma after he read his son's second grade journal and a homemade book he'd written called "How to Train Your Dog." Taken with how well Giancarlo expressed himself and how clear he was about his feelings, Roma asked his son if he would be interested in collaborating on a book. Giancarlo agreed, and after discussing several possibilities, they decided that Giancarlo would write about dad's Brooklyn photographs--from his earliest days as a photographer in 1973 through today. They began with a box of fifty photographs, and edited according to Giancarlo's preferences, turning the process of creating the book into a dialog between father and son, photographer and writer. The result is "Show & Tell," a charming look at life through a father's eyes from a child's perspective. "What an extra-special collaboration: son and father introducing us to their picture neighborhood Bravo to both " --Fred Rogers creator and host, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood"

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1576871339
• ISBN13: 9781576871331
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: powerHouse Books
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.0" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Show & Tell

This was required by my college photography class. After study, quiz and explanation in class with the professor, the book to my surprise was an excellent observation by an 8 year old boy.

A wonderful Father's Day gift, and an invitation to see....

I received Show and Tell as a Father's Day gift from my daughter, a recent student of Thomas Roma's at Barnard, and it is a wonderful book. We inhabit a world of barriers and skepticism, even cynicism, and I must confess that at first I too was skeptical of the notion of father-and-child collaboration. But in a few pages there was no doubt that Giancarlo's voice was indeed that of an eight- or nine-year-old juxtaposed with Thomas' sometimes stark black and white photography. By that time I realized that something else was happening that is rare, a great gift. Giancarlo's words cut through the barriers of my skepticism and my adult, expectation-based way of seeing to open my eyes to the real physical and human content of his father's photographic compositions. It is impossible to know how much direction Thomas gave to Giancarlo in framing the verbal exercises, yet each one seems just right, it is what it is, it opens the photograph, and ultimately is in no way just an exercise. It is clear Thomas chose content that would be real and accessible to Giancarlo, and in any case I am grateful for the collaboration, for the invitation to see, and for the wonderful irony that in this collaboration I found my identification more with the boy than with his father.