Red Daylily, Emily at age 14 – negative
from silhouette of Dickinson cut by Charles Temple, 1845)
©Leah Sobsey and Amanda Marchand

Sun-Fused Imagery: Anthotype Workshop with Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey

Cost:
$425.00
$400.00 for SF Camerawork Members
$375.00 for students (students please email your current student ID to lucien@photoalliance.org for a discount code)
Limited to 16 participants

Time:
Sunday, May 4, 2025, 10:00 am to 2:00 pm PDT

Location:
SF Camerawork
Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd, Building A
San Francisco, CA 94123

Join Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey for a one-day Anthotype Workshop this May, inspired by the poetic legacy of Emily Dickinson’s herbarium. This immersive, hands-on experience invites participants to connect with nature while exploring one of photography’s earliest processes, using plant-based emulsions and sunlight to create unique, organic prints.  

Drawing from their own gardens, participants will gather leaves, petals, and botanicals to craft Anthotype printing paper. Under the guidance of Marchand and Sobsey, they will experiment with a range of techniques including pressing plants onto paper, extracting pigments using a mortar and pestle, and even hammering flowers onto fabric. Each revealing the delicate, fleeting beauty of this eco-conscious photographic process.

A ticket to attend the May 4th PhotoAlliance lecture at Fort Mason featuring Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey, with Ala Ebtekar is included with registration to this workshop.

Sun-Fused Imagery workshop is presented in partnership with SF Camerawork.

Anthotype Workshop with Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey at Datz Press in Seoul, 2024. Photo courtesy of Datz Press

Amanda Marchand is a Canadian, NY-based photographer and educator. She uses an experimental approach to photography to investigate the natural world and our changing climate.

The 2024 Lenscratch Art & Science Awards - 1st Place Winner; LensCulture Art Awards 2024 - Winner (3rd place Series); The London Photography Awards 2024; the 21st Julia Margaret Cameron Photography Awards 2023; The 2022 Silver List (Silver Eye Center for Photography and Carnegie Mellon); Medium Photo’s Second Sight Award 2021; Photo Lucida’s Critical Mass Top 50, 2021; the 2019 International LensCulture Art Awards, Winner (2nd Place Series); “Curator's Choice - 2nd Place Winner,” CENTER’s Choice Awards 2015. She is a MacDowell Colony, Hermitage Artist Retreat, and Headlands Center for the Arts Fellow.

Marchand’s monographs include, This Earthen Door: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium (2024); Nothing Will Ever be the Same Again (2019); and Night Garden (2015) - Datz Press. Her artist books include, The World is Astonishing with You in it: A 21st Century Field Guide to the Birds, Ferns and Wildflowers (2022); The Book of Hours (2018); Because the Sky (2017). 415/514 was published by Edition One Studios (2008). Her novel, without cease the earth faintly trembles (DC Books, 2003) was awarded Critic's Pick by NOW Magazine.

Marchand’s work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group shows. Her work has been published in The Marginalian, Lenscratch, ARTnews, LensCulture, Fraction Magazine, and Aint Bad Magazine, among others. It has been collected by The Getty Research Institute, San Jose Museum of Art, the Center for Creative Photography, Stanford University Library, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Glen Hospital MUHC Collection, the Bolinas Art Museum, and the NY Public Library. She is represented by Traywick Contemporary, Koslov Larsen, Rick Wester Fine Art, and through photo-eye Gallery’s Photographer’s Showcase. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is the mother of two boys.

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 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 photography.

This Earthen Door had its world debut at PHOTOFAIRS NYC, Fall 2023. Sobsey’s recent collaborative exhibition, In Search Of Thoreau’s Flowers, at The Harvard Museum of Natural History, documents species loss through Henry David Thoreau’s herbarium. Her work on plant loss is included in a forthcoming show at the Huntington Museum in California, Fall 2024. Her books include Collections: Birds Bones and Butterflies (2016) and Bull City Summer (2013), This Earthen Door (Datz Press, 2024).

Sobsey has exhibited internationally, and her work is held in private and public collections across the US, including North Carolina Museum of Art, Credit Suisse, Cassilhaus Collection, Duke University Hospital, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft Collection, and Grand Canyon National Park. She has participated in numerous artist residencies, including the Virginia Center for the Arts, Dumbarton Oaks, Penland, The National Park system, Hambidge, Habla Mexico. Her images have appeared in Artnews, New Yorker.com, the Paris Review Daily, Slate.com, Hyperallergic.com, The Telegraph, Audubon and many more. Her work is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art, NYC.

Location
SF Camerawork, Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd, Building A, San Francisco, CA 94123

Parking
The Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture provides a paid parking lot. Check the day's calendar of events to see what is happening on campus to ensure that the parking lot is not reserved for an outdoor event - the parking lot does fill up occasionally, and parking fees may increase on certain high-attendance dates.

Free parking can be found nearby at Marina Green.

Food
An hour break will be given for lunch. There are numerous restaurants nearby or, pack a bag lunch to eat at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

SF Camerawork is a long-standing leader in the San Francisco arts milieu, committed to provoking discovery, experimentation, and exchange through exhibitions and experiences for all who value new ideas in photography. The organization was founded in 1974 by a collective of artists who welcomed experimental photography, unconventional techniques, and sociopolitical themes and who fostered a range of alternative styles and approaches. The essence of the founders’ vision remains at the core of SF Camerawork even as the organization has adapted to the changing scope of photography and surrounding cultural landscape.

For more than 45 years, SF Camerawork has provided a launching pad for many artists’ careers, supplying invaluable financial support, exhibition space, curation, and patronage. In its early years, SF Camerawork was the first organization in the Bay Area to host exhibitions and lectures by controversial but ultimately highly influential artists such as Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Susan Meiselas, and Joel-Peter Witkin. More recently, the organization has presented the first West Coast exhibitions for artists including John Chiara, Binh Danh, Erica Deeman, Jennifer Karady, Jason Lazurus, Chris McCaw, Wang Ning De, and Meghann Riepenhoff — artists who have emerged as leaders of a new generation gaining international prominence.

Installation view of 2023 exhibition Dismantling Monoliths. Photograph by Henrik Kam