Milk Factory: Rooms for Care

Milk Factory: Rooms for Care is a conversation with artist Corinne May Botz that investigates reproductive labor and the architectures of care. The evening will open with a short screening of the project’s film, Milk Factory, recorded in the lactation suite at the U.S. House of Representatives — an unlikely yet telling stage for questions about maternal labor and the care economy. Moderated by artist Amanda Lucidon, and joined by guest Michelle Romo who was featured in the film, the dialogue situates image-making as civic practice, foregrounding the politics of representation, the burden of hidden labor, and the urgent need to reimagine care in public life.

As both mirror and intervention, Botz’s photographs move across disparate sites — a pop-up tent used by farm laborers, the lactation room at Goldman Sachs, a solitary confinement cell converted into a serene Pr*son pumping area, a bar bathroom, a train, a school classroom, and a boiler room — mapping how spaces of care expose contradictions in American work and family life. Testimonies, from a police officer pushed to exhaustion in a hostile workplace to a bereaved mother who donated milk after loss, demonstrate how lived experience becomes political evidence. Through these images and accounts, Milk Factory reframes private struggles as collective realities, initiating space for public discourse on invisible labor and maternal justice.

Organized by For Freedoms, this event is part of American Realities: For Freedoms Town Halls, a series of artist-led conversations that interrogate the distance between American myth and lived experience. The evening will conclude with a book signing hosted in partnership with Saint Lucy Books.

*The event is child-friendly — children, breastfeeding, and pumping are welcome.

ABOUT MILK FACTORY

Milk Factory is a photographic series, film, and book by Corinne May Botz. The newly released book Milk Factory (Saint Lucy Books, Fall 2025), features over 45 full-page color photographs, diverse first-hand accounts of pumping, and essays from Hettie Judah, Mathilde Cohen, and Botz herself. Together, these narratives trace the art historical, social, and political significance of the series.

The short film Milk Factory (10:47 min.) offers a rare glimpse into a lactation suite in the U.S. House of Representatives, created by Nancy Pelosi, where women across political divides find connection. In an era of deep polarization, these moments of shared experience underscore the urgent need for legislation that supports families. Despite progress, including the passage of the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act during one of the filming dates, the United States remains the only high-income country without mandated paid family leave. The lack of care forces many people to return to work soon after giving birth, contributing to the pervasiveness of pumping in the workplace. Highlighting the growth of lactation rooms while addressing systemic issues affecting women —particularly women of color and working parents — Milk Factory resonates as a portrait of advocacy, calling for policy change that affirms caregiving as essential for all families.

BIOS

Corinne May Botz is a visual artist and educator based in New York whose practice encompasses photography, writing, and filmmaking. A sustained focus on space, gender, and the body, particularly relating to women’s experiences, is central to her practice. Her published books combining photography and writing include The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (Phaidon/Monacelli Press, 2004), Haunted Houses (Phaidon/Monacelli Press, 2010), and Milk Factory (Saint Lucy Books, 2025). Botz’s photographs have been internationally exhibited at such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Wurttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany; Wellcome Collection; De Appel, Amsterdam; and Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK. She has had solo exhibitions at Benrubi Gallery and Bellwether Gallery in New York City; Alice Austen House, Hudson Hall, Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington D.C. and RedLine Gallery in Denver, Colorado. Her work has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, Granta, Foam Magazine, Bookforum, Art Papers, Modern Painters, Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Village Voice, Exit, Slate, Time: Lightbox, and Ciel Variable. Her Oscar-qualifying short film Bedside Manner (2016) won the Grand Jury Prize at DOC NYC. She 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).

Amanda Lucidon is an award-winning photographer and filmmaker. She is a New York Times best-selling author and motivational speaker with Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau. Lucidon served as an Official White House photographer responsible for documenting First Lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. She is one of only a few female White House photographers in history. In 2018, the John F. Kennedy Center appointed Lucidon as a Turnaround Artist, highlighting the importance of the arts in underserved schools. Lucidon is the author of Chasing Light and Reach Higher and has also instructed more than 10,000 students through her CreativeLive class: Creating a Life in Storytelling. Lucidon is the co-founder of Grounded, an organization of artists creating immersive experiences to inspire hope and healing through community collaboration.

Michelle Romo is a senior policy professional and, until a recent reduction in force, a career public servant of thirteen years in the U.S. Department of State. Her work has spanned intelligence, public opinion research, human rights, sanctions policy, workforce modernization, and strategic engagement, with a focus on leadership and institutional accountability. In 2017, she completed a Brookings Fellowship in the U.S. Senate, where she advised on foreign policy, drafted legislation on national security and federal workforce policy, and collaborated with stakeholders to advance legislative priorities. At State, she co-founded Working Parents @ State, an employee-led organization advocating for expanded backup care benefits, breastfeeding accommodations, paid parental leave, and caregiver inclusion across the federal workforce. Following the prohibition on employee organizations and subsequent federal workforce policies that disproportionately affect caregivers, Romo continues to engage in public dialogue on care, labor, and leadership. A recipient of the Boren Fellowship to South Africa, she holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California, a Master of Public Policy from UCLA, and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Cape Town. A mother of three, her career reflects a sustained commitment to building systems grounded in empathy, accountability, and structural change.

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Host or Publisher The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at The George Washington University