AMANDA MARCHAND

THIS EARTHEN DOOR: 2021 - present

This eco-feminist collaboration with artist Leah Sobsey re-works Emily Dickinson’s herbarium (botanical sampler) via Anthotypes, a plant-based process invented during Dickinson’s era just as photography was being born. During her life Dickinson was not famous for her poetry, but for her green thumb. Our project re-makes her 66 herbarium pages with plant pigments from 66 species that we grew and harvested in our own gardens - and that Dickinson grew, among the 400+ herbarium species. We partnered with scientists Kyra Krakos and Peter Grima to expand upon Emily’s flower sampler. The color schemas are our own 21st-Century herbarium, a sumptuous study of color, telling plant stories through Dickinson’s world of flowers, a portal between the past and present.

Praise for THIS EARTHEN DOOR:

The work launched at PHOTOFAIRS NYC with Rick Wester Fine Art, Sept 2023. PHOTOFAIR founder, Scott Grey, stated in ArtNEWS that it was an “unbelievable beautiful” example of the scope of photography on display at the fair. “It’s absolutely mind blowing,” he said. “When you scratch the surface, and you understand how that was made and how it was produced and the thinking behind it, and the context behind it and the concept, these artists are incredible.” Read the full article HERE.

Read Maria Popova’s article - The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful Flower Pigment Prints via a Victorian Imaging Process: ”Two centuries later, photographers Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey pay an anthotype homage to Dickinson in their lovely collaboration This Earthen Door, titled after a line from her poem “We can but follow to the Sun.” Painstakingly recreating all 66 pages of Dickinson’s herbarium in large-scale anthotypes made with juices from 66 species of plants the poet grew in her garden, they offer something uncommonly lyrical — part color study and part time travel, harmonizing the ephemeral and the eternal, radiating the quiet consolation of the dialogue between nature and human nature.” The Marginalian, Jan 2024.

On view at the Peter and Stephen Sachs Museum at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis, through May 2024.

IMAGES: Image 1-3 & 17: PhotoFairs NYC with RWFA; Image 3: Herbarium Plate 4, Marigold; Image 4: Herbarium Plate 8, Petunia; Image 5: Herbarium Plate 12, Red Salvia; Image 6: Herbarium Plate 9, Poppy; Image 8: A leaf from Dickinson’s original herbarium and our Herbarium Plate 42, Pokeweed; Image 9: The earthen door (earth tones); Image 10: Could I - then - shut the Door (Dickinson greenhouse); Image 11: The only ghost I ever saw (Ghost Plant); Image 12: A transport one cannot contain (invasive species); Image 13: Flowers - Well - if anybody (anthotype color wheel); Image 14: This was in the white of the year (Dickinson in white); Images 15 & 16: “This Earthen Door,” Peter and Stephen Sachs Museum, Missouri Botanical Gardens