The Vale of Cashmere, as it is known, is an anonymous, secret meeting ground where scores of men, mostly of African American descent, find one another for sex where such encounters occur between men of all walks of life, many of them identifying not as gay but as heterosexuals, with children and wives and a deep secret. Roma, with his awkward and oversized hand-made cameras and unwieldy photography gear, boldly stepped into the Vale, oftentimes unwelcome and always uninvited, into the center of clandestine, testosterone-fuelled sex encounters where the police and violence always loomed as a risk. Understandably, many of the men Roma approached to photograph in a formal portrait were not interested, but surprisingly, many were. After agreeing to be photographed Roma would offer the men time and the opportunity to show Roma something of themselves they might not have the chance to do otherwise. Although originally conceived solely as a portrait project, the more time Roma spent in the Vale of Cashmere, the more the physical beauty of the Vale became inseparable from the portraits and many landscape photographs were made to be included in the book. In addition to the landscapes, a custom modified miniature camera was utilized to provide sequential pictures depicting the steady march of the mostly solitary men as they cruised the paths and roadways of the Vale. These candid photographs, which run along the bottom of the pages of landscape photographs, are reproduced in small scale so as to make it impossible to identify any individual. Acclaimed photographer Thomas Roma's motivation for doing the project came from his wish to honor the memory of a dear friend who died of AIDS in 1991, and who introduced him to the Vale of Cashmere.
