We spoke to New York-based photographer Corinne May Botz and got her to walk us through a few of her photos, explaining what compels her to visit agoraphobics and objectophiliacs, investigate haunted houses and photograph the physical evidence from murder scenes
By Victoria Ford
You track down some unusual subjects. How do you find and convince them to cooperate with you? It’s not always easy. I need to have a sincere investment in the subject matter in order to persevere. It’s also important for me to work with subjects who have a personal investment and are open to the project. There has to be something at stake for both of us.
For instance with the agoraphobia project, getting volunteers was very difficult and I had to try every angle to get people to ask me into their houses. But I got along with all the people I met, so even though they would get nervous and cancel on me, it was worth it in the end. That was probably the most difficult project I’ve done in terms of intense psychological interaction. I didn’t really understand the extent of the condition, so my gradual understanding and experiences became part of the project
Does that kind of challenge make you enjoy your work? Definitely. Although right now I’m backing away from that a little bit. It’s already so hard to do a project, I'm thinking: do I really have to set it up to be so difficult from the start?
What are some things that have surprised you? Just how debilitating agoraphobia is, and how my entering their spaces would be thought of as an invasion. There was one woman who I photographed at her house for a while, I knew her for over a year. One day I got into conversation with her husband and he said, “She’s fine when you’re here, but when you leave she gets really nervous about the pictures you took. She feels like it’s part of her going out into the world.” That’s something I thought about a lot afterwards.
Would you say you had a happy childhood? Yeah definitely. Very untraumatic, very nice.
That’s a little different to many of the people you meet when you’re doing your art and research… Yeah, and the kind of stuff that I’m drawn to. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I have that safe point of departure that I can handle it.
