SUSSMAN, RACHEL

Rachel Sussman

Spruce Gran Picea #0909-11A07 (9,550 years old, Dalarna, Sweden), 2009
Archival Pigment Print
with signed book in limited edition, hand-constructed box
13 1/8 x 11 ¼ on 14 1/8 x 12 ¼ inch paper 
Signed Edition of 150
 

Since 2004, Rachel Sussman has been traveling the world to photograph organisms aged 2,000 years and older for her ongoing series, The Oldest Living Things in the World. She says about the project, “I think of all of these organisms as palimpsests. They contain thousands of years of their own histories within themselves, and they also contain records of natural and human events.” Sussman also insists on an environmental message since the organisms she photographs are vulnerable to climate change. This print is accompanied by a book with essays by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Carl Zimmer within a hand-constructed box. The box has the unique edition number hand-stamped on the inside cover and measures 14.75 x 13.25 x 1.75 inches.

Rachel Sussman is a contemporary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Sussman’s work has been exhibited at the Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation (2014), Bucknell University (2015), The National Museum of Wildlife Art (2015), the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Germany (2012), the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (2011), Kunstverein Hannover, Germany (2011), the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. (2014-15), and in Abu Dhabi at the NYUAD Art Gallery (2015). Current and upcoming exhibitions include the George Eastman House, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Hotchkiss School, and the Kohler Arts Center. She is a Guggenheim, NYFA and MacDowell Colony Fellow, has spoken on the TED main stage (her TED talk has viewed over a million times) and at the Long Now Foundation, and is a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps. She holds a BFA in Photography at the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY (1998).