  The Roper resonance, the first excited state of the nucleon, Is one of the
best-established baryon resonances. Yet, its properties have not been
consistently explained by effective models of QCD, such as the non-relativistic
quark model. In this letter, we propose an alternative approach in the
Sakai-Sugimoto model that is one of the holographic models of QCD. In
particular, we analyze the helicity amplitude of the electromagnetic
transitions at the leading of 't~Hooft coupling $1/\lambda$. The model
incorporates baryon structure at short distance by non-linear mesons surrounded
by meson clouds at long distance. We demonstrate that the recently observed
data by CLAS are explained in the present approach.
