Leah Sobsey is an interdisciplinary artist, Professor of Photography and School of Art Graduate Director at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, whose work explores the intersections of photography, science, history, and environmental storytelling. Combining nineteenth-century photographic processes with contemporary digital technologies, she creates research-based projects that investigate the complex relationships between humans and the natural world. Working collaboratively with scientists, archivists, and museum collections, Sobsey transforms botanical and zoological specimens, historical archives, and living landscapes into poetic visual narratives that examine biodiversity, ecological change, and cultural memory.
Recent honors include the 2026 Carnegie Mellon Hunt Research Fellowship, the inaugural Artist-in-Residence Award at the North Carolina State University Plant Sciences Initiative, and First Place in the 2025 Lenscratch Art and Science Awards. She has received major site-specific commissions from Point Reyes National Seashore, the Gregg Museum of Art & Design, the Brandywine Museum of Art, and the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Sobsey’s monographs include This Earthen Door: Emily Dickinson's Herbarium, Collections: Birds, Bones and Butterflies. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Brandywine Museum of Art, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Huntington Art Museum Los Angeles, Datz Seoul Korea, National Chengchi University Taipei, the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum at the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Gregg Museum of Art & Design, the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, AIPAD New York, Paris Photo, Rick Wester Fine Art, Galerie XII, and Traywick Contemporary. Her photographs and artist books are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Getty Research Institute, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Harvard University, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Brandywine Museum of Art, Duke University Hospital, the Microsoft Art Collection, MD Anderson Hospital, and the Cassilhaus Collection. Sobsey's work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Washington Post, The Marginalian, Harper's Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Hyperallergic, Lenscratch, and Audubon. She is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art NYC, Galerie XII Los Angeles, and Traywick Contemporary Berkeley,