“Collections”

Leah Sobsey's multidisciplinary photographic practice reaches into the fields of science, design, installation, and textile. Her photo-based work explores the natural world through archives and taxonomies with an experimental and materials-based approach to the medium of photography. Often partnering with scientists, she uses a historical, scientific, and artistic lens, to understand the connection to plant and animal loss as one indication of the larger climatological perils we face as a species. She is interested in creating dialog between art and science and has spent the last decade-plus photographing specimens from National Park and university museum collections across the country to understand climate change and species loss. Sobsey works in 19th-century photographic processes combined with digital technology with a specialty in plant-based printing techniques.

Sobsey shows nationally and internationally in galleries, public spaces, and museums; her current exhibition documenting species loss through Henry David Thoreau's herbarium, In Search of Thoreau's Flowers is open through November 2023 at The Harvard Museum of Natural History. Her work is held in private and public collections across the country. She received her BA from Guilford College and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute.

This talk will take place in Room A266 Bay 10 on the second floor of Smith Warehouse. Free and open to the public.