In Search Of Thoreau's Flowers with Leah Sobsey

How can an imaginative merging of art and science help us reach a meaningful understanding of the relationship between our actions, climate change, and diminishing biodiversity?

This artist talk will dive into the exhibition In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers, now on view at the Harvard Museum of Natural History through November 2023. The inspiration for this project was a set of 648 plant specimens in the Harvard University Herbaria that Henry David Thoreau collected at Walden Pond. In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers is an immersive installation that uses projected animations, data visualization, cyanotypes, soundscapes, and augmented spatial reality to offer an artistic interpretation of writer Henry David Thoreau’s preserved plant specimens as viewed through the lens of climate change.

This is a FREE event. Registration is required to reserve your spot and receive event reminders.

About Leah Sobsey

Leah Sobsey is an image maker, Associate Professor of Photography, curator and Director of the Gatewood Gallery at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Sobsey’s multidisciplinary photographic practice reaches into the fields of science, design, installation and textile. Often partnering with scientists, her photo-based work explores the natural world through archives and taxonomies with an experimental and materials-based approach to the medium of photography to explore the impacts of climate change and species loss.

Her current exhibition, In Search Of Thoreau’s Flowers documents species loss through Henry David Thoreau’s herbarium, and is open through November 2023 at The Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Discover her work on Instagram @leahsobsey

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