Photographer Marissa Roth embarked on a deeply personal artistic journey, completing seven transatlantic crossings aboard the Queen Mary II between May 2015 and May 2019. Her project, titled "The Crossing: A Photographic Meditation on the Atlantic Ocean," represents both an artistic exploration and an emotional pilgrimage honoring her parents' wartime escape from Europe to America.
Roth's photographic meditation stems from her parents' remarkable love story that began during their flight from Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. In late October 1938, both parents independently fled their respective homes and boarded the original Queen Mary bound for America, seeking refuge from what would soon become World War II. During that fateful autumn crossing on stormy seas, the two strangers met and fell in love, transforming their pragmatic escape into a romantic and prophetic passage from fear to hope, and from probable death to life.
The Atlantic Ocean became Roth's canvas for understanding her parents' experiences and studying what she calls "the geography of memory." Her seven crossings between New York City and Southampton, England, served as allegorical return journeys to Europe in homage to her mother and father. During westward crossings, she retraced their destiny, contemplating how they said goodbye to everyone and everything they knew and loved before embarking on what she describes as their "mournful and blissful crossing."
Roth's artistic vision extended beyond family history to encompass a broader exploration of oceanic vastness and human connection to nature. She sought to witness the graceful 360-degree, uninterrupted eye-level view of the earth's curvature and comprehend the scale of an ocean set against the vast expanse of the cosmos. The project allowed her to submit to the earth's steady eastward rotation, experienced through time attuned to sunrise and sunset, and through the visibly changing light playing off the ocean's surface.
Technically, Roth chose to work exclusively with color transparency film, photographing solely from the perspective of the ocean. She emphasizes her continued love for film's alchemy and mystery, appreciating the random nature of emulsion and the creative suspension required when unable to see results until development. This medium aligns with her philosophy that photography is purely about technique, instinct, and trust.
Roth's creative practice has always been external and physical, focused on immediacy and place. She deliberately travels without expectations about what she will see or experience, preparing as thoroughly as possible but then surrendering to chance circumstances once embarked. After completing her first crossing, she knew she would need to undertake more, driven by her desire to "keep holding the light from the ocean inside of me."
With each subsequent crossing, Roth deepened her photographic meditation and exploration of this breathtaking subject while turning inward to understand the emotional experience of crossing an ocean. She frequently found that the sea state would mirror her own state of being, creating a profound connection between internal emotion and external environment. This convergence of personal history, artistic vision, and oceanic meditation resulted in a body of work that transforms a family's wartime escape into a contemporary exploration of memory, journey, and the transformative power of crossing vast waters.
