Rose Marie Cromwell has arrived

Make note of Rose Marie Cromwell. She is a Fulbright Fellow Scholar currently working between New York City and Panama, where she participated in the 1st Bienale del Sur in Panama City.  She was named one of the  25 under 25 Up and Coming American Photographers by PowerHouse Books and The Center for Documentary Studies . Cromwell was also recently invited to be a Light Work Artist in Residence in 2014.  Oh, and she also teaches at the International Center of Photography.

Cromwell’s series, Everything Arrives was inspired by “The Parade Ends”, a poem by Reinaldo Arenas. The project spans multiple trips to Cuba over a four year period, where it becomes a “conversations about [Cromwell’s] negotiation of intimacy.”

Arenas describes the streets of Havana with cold harshness; an oppressive reality where free will seems unattainable. Finally, ‘everything arrives’ and he is able to exercise agency in the simplest of ways; he mentally frees himself from his present physical state and elevates himself to a world of ‘incessant jingling.’ Here, in this state, he floats. Everything is open. Nothing is closed.

Cromwell describes her relationship with Cuba as complicated. “When there, I feel part of a close community, but, ultimately, am always an outsider. As an attempt to depict these contradicting experiences, I photograph everyday rituals and still lives that hold personal meaning. I construct alternative space in my imagery to also question traditional photographic representations of Cuba and the imagined geographies they create. Ultimately, ‘Everything Arrives’ communicates the complexity of interpreting a specific geography through photographs.”

Cromwell is also a social practice artist, working as founder and director of Cambio Creativo, an alternative arts education initiative based in Panama.