Rose Marie Cromwell

AK: How did motherhood change your approach to your work?

RMC: Since I began making images, I have often photographed my family, but I never considered these images as part of a public project. After a brush with death while giving birth to my daughter, I turned to photography to process my feelings during the postpartum period. Initially, I shared these photographs on a private Instagram account. When my publisher saw them and suggested a book, I realized my personal experience resonated with others. This led to my book, Eclipse.

While working on A Geological Survey, I continued to navigate my new role as a mother and artist. I wondered how my photographic practice could continue with a child in tow. Inspired by the image of Robert Frank's wife and children in the backseat in The Americans, I contemplated what a road trip photography project would look like from a new mother's perspective. As someone who has critiqued how globalized world order informs our personal lives in my work, I felt obliged to research how one would live off the grid and considered these early road trips with my family to off the grid locations to be research for A Geological Survey. 

AK: And likewise, in the group exhibition, Truth Told Slant at the High Museum in Atlanta, were images of your adopted home city of Miami. They focus on urban moments that quantifies a range of characteristics representing the city as if meandering and spying idiosyncratic and disparate subjects, and as you have described as Borderlands. Can you expand on your process for selecting compositions and how they reference this concept?

RMC: While creating the images for my book A More Fluid Atmosphere, I sought moments of intimacy and transcendence in Miami's industrial and commercial spaces. Acting as a street photographer, I explored neighborhoods focused more on global commerce and real estate development than on the quality of life for locals. This approach challenges typical visual representations of Miami as a beach holiday and party city.

I capture how residents navigate life in these areas, often by walking, driving around, or meeting people online to arrange portrait sessions. I also look for still-life and landscape scenes where materials and objects tell stories of constant construction, commodification, labor, and the resilient natural environment of South Florida.

I refer to Miami as a Borderlands, inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa's book Borderlands/La Frontera. Miami's proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean makes it a transient city where many seek refuge. Despite its vibrancy, Miami remains physically precarious, built on landfill by the Army Corps of Engineers and bordered by the remnants of a once free-flowing river of grass.