Her work examines the intersections of environment, globalization, and culture. Cromwell's reporting on Florida’s sugar industry, investigating the environmental and public health impacts of large-scale sugarcane production, was published in Rolling Stone.
She is the author of three acclaimed photobooks— El Libro Supremo de la Suerte (2018), winner of the Light Work Photobook Prize and named one of TIME’s 25 Best Photobooks of 2018, Eclipse (2021), and A More Fluid Atmosphere (2021).
Cromwell has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami and in group shows at the High Museum of Art (Atlanta), Aperture Foundation (New York), and Saatchi Gallery (London). Her photographs are held in the collections of the Getty Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, the High Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, among others.
Her most recent solo museum exhibition, Rose Marie Cromwell: A Geological Survey at ICA Miami, presents her interpretation of landscape photography, weaving together personal narrative and environmental history.
Cromwell is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, a Getty Reportage Grant, and residencies at Light Work and Oolite Arts.
She has a Master of Fine Arts from Syracuse University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.