Unternächte

Unternächte is what my grandmother and great-grandmother in Bavaria called the nights between Winter Solstice and Epiphany, a liminal period known more widely as the Twelve Nights of Christmas. As winter gives way to spring, as the old fades and the new has yet to emerge, life and death, light and darkness blur together, creating a space both dangerous and cathartic. During these nights, the gates to the beyond open wide, and the spirits descend into the mortal realm. In my family, this time has been marked by tales and traditions passed down through generations of women who sought guidance and comfort on the uncertain path ahead.

Threshold moments like the Twelve Nights, an ending with no clear beginning in sight, have always carried a collective unease. Today, political rifts, environmental crises, and technological disorientation echo that same in-between feeling. As we collectively reach for new rituals and beliefs to feel secure in a fragmented world, my foremothers’ reliance on these customs resonates with a much wider moment.

Through photography, I explore how we turn to lore when the ground feels unsteady. I stage, re-stage, and reimagine family story and local tradition until the lines between memory and invention, between comfort and threat, blur. The imagery is rooted in the tradition of folk horror, where the same beliefs that hold a community together can, under pressure, turn against those within it just as easily as those outside it. The same fire that keeps a house warm can burn it down.

Rather than a photographic survey, the work mirrors this ambiguity by evoking an old collection of fairy tales, something to return to and retell, its meaning shifting with each encounter. Like the stories it draws on, passed from woman to woman, it’s a tale that grows with us, carrying both comfort and warning.