This month reveals our collective affinity for the grotesque, where all around our country people mount horror-infused Halloween displays of wild variety. Just in time for Samhain season, “Ghosts, Mother’s Milk, and Other Stories” at Hudson Hall through November 23, is a chilling exhibition featuring over 30 works by photographer and filmmaker Corinne May Botz. Through her careful eye, Botz takes us into the creepy corners of our shared psyche in moments that captivate and confront.
Let us consider the titular trifecta word for word: first there are the “Ghosts” as encountered in her Haunted Houses series of photos (published in book format by Monacelli Press in 2010). These works are from a long-term project where Botz collected oral stories about ghosts and documented over 80 haunted sites around the USA. One strange example is Bermuda Inn, Staten Island, New York (2010), a photo of a painting and the lower half of a woman in a red hoopskirt, where a slight tear at the bottom of the canvas reveals a bewildering brightness underneath. These images illuminate a dystopian domesticity, and Private Residence, Cumberland, Maine (2010) is another irksome vision from the series. Here Botz has documented a cluttered living room with aging furniture and souvenirs strewn about as two cats perch cozily while two eldritch portraits on the wall amplify the weirdness.
Next are the “Mother’s Milk” images from her Milk Factory series, with an overt focus on bottles of milk and breast pumps. These photos reflect an odd combination of desolation and obligation, with the cloudy liquid as the ingenue of each vignette. Public School Teacher (2018) has a hazy sci-fi quality (the science room backdrop does the trick), while Incarcerated Parent (2019) is among the most arresting of this group. In this photo, an empty rocking chair with checkered blankets and a breast-pump contraption are set against a mint-ice-cream-color concrete wall with a drawing of a coy Peter Rabbit above, and this lonesome moment ripped at my maternal heartstrings. These solitary photos are glaringly vacant of the mothers themselves, and Musician (2024), featuring a breast pump next to a pile of papers with a poem titled “Cruel Mother” at the top, conjures a quasi-troubling ambiance.
Finally, there are curious “Other Stories” within this masterful show, including The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death series, and these photos get under your skin. Featuring a collection of 18 miniature crime scene models built by Frances Glessner Lee in the 1940s and `50s—Lee is described as a “progressive criminologist”—these photos reveal the prominence of female murder victims (the mini models were based on actual homicides). Botz spent years researching and writing about Lee, prompting a revival of her work. Burned Cabin (2004) is the blunt title for the dire sight, a location charred to the bones, and among the most startling of the series is Dark Bathroom (tub) (2004). In this image, a porcelain doll is on her back with her legs up in the air, crushed into a tub and suffocated by running water from the faucet. Both appalling and alluring for their sheer fright, we are fascinated by these tiny horror shows.
The scariest thing in this show isn’t a ghost—it’s a life. Botz strips away illusion to expose the raw circuitry of human existence: care, confinement, desire, decay. She doesn’t sensationalize the darkness; she documents it. And in doing so, she reminds us that the most haunted places are the ones we live in.
