Monday, December 9, 2024
7pm ET

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Join artist and author Corinne May Botz as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of her best-selling book The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a collection of eighteen miniature crime scene models and the woman who constructed them, progressive criminologist Frances Glessner Lee (1878 – 1962).

Built in the 1940's and 50's after actual homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, the dioramas were created to train police officers to assess visual evidence. They display an astounding level of precision and detail: shades can be raised and lowered, mice live in the walls, stereoscopes work, whistles blow and pencils write. In addition to creating hundreds of photographs of the models, Botz spent years researching and writing about Lee, drawing on archival research as well as interviews with Lee's family and police colleagues. Tonight, Botz will discuss the fascinating life of Frances Glessner Lee, and take you on a photographic journey of the "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death."

Corinne Botz is an artist and educator, whose practice engages with issues including narrative, space, gender, and the body. Her photographs have been widely exhibited, and her published books combining her photography and writing include The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (Monacelli/Phaidon Press, 2004) and Haunted Houses (Monacelli/Phaidon Press, 2010). Botz’s photographs have been internationally exhibited at such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, De Appel, Turner Contemporary, Smack Mellon, Opalka Gallery, Welcome Collection, Alice Austen House Museum, and Benrubi Gallery. Her Oscar Qualifying short film “Bedside Manner” (2016) won the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC. Her work has been written about in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Papers, Foam Magazine, Hyperallergic, Granta, Bookforum, Modern Painters, and Time. She has held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Atlantic Center for the Arts; Akademie Schloss Solitude; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Mana Contemporary. Botz is the recipient of both the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation grants. Botz is on the faculty of International Center of Photography and John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY).

Image: Dark Bathroom (tub), from The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, Corinne Botz