Gem Fletcher talks to Rose Marie Cromwell about “King of Fish,” a long-term project on the history and communities living in Coco Solo, a former U.S. military base near the Caribbean terminus of the Panama Canal. When the canal administration, along with the “Canal Zone,” was transferred to Panama at the end of 1999, the barracks in Coco Solo were repurposed as public housing. Three hundred Panamanian families moved in. Among them was Vladimir “Pocho” Utria, a young Panamanian man growing up in the early 2000s.
The project began as a collaborative portrait series with Pocho, presenting his transition from childhood to adulthood in the midst of a landscape suspended between natural paradise and oppressive dystopia. Over time, it has expanded beyond Pocho’s story and that of his immediate community to consider the history of the site and the hegemonic forces that intersected there and in the U.S. Canal Zone as a whole. By looking closely at one place and community over time, the project underscores the ways colonial and neo-imperial power have shaped global capitalism and consumer culture, leaving many to eke out an existence in the literal shadow of globalization.
-
Rose Marie Cromwell (b. 1983, Sacramento, CA; based in Miami) is a photographer and artist whose work explores the effects of globalization on the local, and the tenuous space between the political and the spiritual. Her first book, El Libro Supremo de la Suerte, was published by TIS Books in 2018, awarded the Light Work Photobook Prize, and named one of the "25 Best Photobooks of 2018" by TIME Magazine. In 2021, she released two additional books: Eclipse (TIS Books) and A More Fluid Atmosphere (Pomegranate Press). Cromwell’s first solo museum exhibition opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in 2024. That same year, she had a solo exhibition within the larger exhibition Turning the Page at Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, and was one of five artists featured in Truth Told Slant: Contemporary Documentary Photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. She has also exhibited work at The Norton Museum, The Aperture Foundation, and The Carnegie during The FotoFocus Biennial. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Grant, a Getty Reportage Grant, and was an Artist-in-Residence at Light Work. Her work is held in the permanent collections at The High Museum of Art, ICA Miami, the MET Library, the MoMA Library, and the SFMoMA Library. In 2025, she presented work with Euqinom Gallery (San Francisco) at ZsONAMACO Art Fair, and will exhibit with the same gallery at Photo London in May. She also has a current solo exhibition with VISU Gallery in Miami.
@rorosiemarie
Gem Fletcher is a writer, consultant and host of The Messy Truth Podcast. Her work has been published in Foam, Aperture, Dazed, Creative Review, 1000 Words and The British Journal of Photography. The Messy Truth podcast is a series of candid conversations that unpack the future of visual culture and what it means to be a photographer today. Now in its tenth season, Gem explores reflections on criticism, starting out, mental health, politics and success with guests like Antwuan Sargent, Catherine Opie, Farah Al Qasimi, Carmen Winant, Charlotte Cotton, Quil Lemons, Brea Souders and Laia Abril.
@gemfletcher
Image credit © Rose Marie Cromwell from the series King of Fish.