Shortlisted · Unveil’d Photobook Award 2018
“Cromwell pays homage to a Cuba that she grew to love over nearly a decade of returning to Havana to make pictures. Her work quickly acknowledges its subjective/self-reflexive nature through a non-linear narrative that alludes to life's ‘luck of the draw,’ exploring some of the very real complexities of contemporary Cuba (including her own presence as an artist coming-of-age). Through a lyrical sequence of images of everyday rituals, she captures a Cuba that is multi-layered and continues to defy expectations. Cromwell’s photographs take us to a place that is, perhaps most of all, profoundly human—and through this, she expresses her belief that even intimacy is political.”
- Shane Lavalette
Rose uses photography to investigate the effects of globalization at the intersection of the spiritual and the political. The foundation of her work is documentary tradition, using a specific geography to define a project. The location, however, is not a subject for her to document, but a stage from which to allude to larger concerns. Some of Rose’s images are found street scenes, while others are elaborate performances, which she mines for authenticity and moments where gender, action, race, and religion, become ambiguous. Rose wants the viewer to deconstruct perceived realities of the photographed scene.
In her installations, Rose activates the space by varying the size and relative position of the photographs to reflect on her subjectivity as a photographer. She wants the viewer to question their relationship to the place, the people, and the materials in the images, and to the created space of the gallery.