This Earthen Door

This Earthen Door, a collaborative photography project between Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey, reinterprets Emily Dickinson’s herbarium, a pressed plant sampler made as a teenager. A renowned and beloved American poet, Dickinson was better known as a gardener during her lifetime. Using digital film and the anthotype printing process, the artists have reimagined the original herbarium (housed by Harvard University) in the language of our time.

Anthotypes are an early photographic sun-printing method that employs plant pigments as photographic emulsion. Drawing on the research and involvement of scientists and Dickinson scholars, this stunning project is ultimately a collaboration of poetry, science, nature, and light. The title, "This Earthen Door," comes from a Dickinson poem, “We can but follow to the Sun.” With reverence for the earth, like so much of Dickinson’s verse, it illustrates the moment an invisible door opens at the world's edge – just as one opens through the light of photography. The book follows the chronology of Dickinson's original 66-page herbarium, and an additional booklet includes a piece of handmade, wildflower seed paper as a plantable Dickinson's poem.