Floridawater I (2019) is a defining image within Hamilton’s photographic work. The scene evokes the dense, swampy wetlands of northern Florida—at once dreamlike and documentary. Like much of her art, the image functions on multiple levels: a portrait of place, a meditation on memory, and a quiet elegy for vanishing ecosystems. The title references “Florida Water,” a spiritual cologne used in Black and Afro-Caribbean rituals, hinting at the invisible presences—ancestral, emotional, ecological—that saturate the land.

This is not a landscape as backdrop, but as witness. Shot with painterly depth and printed with luminous precision, Floridawater I transforms the environment into narrative. It stands as a powerful symbol of Black Southern identity, environmental precarity, and generational resilience. Hamilton doesn’t just photograph nature—she listens to it, mourns with it, and invites us to see it anew.