For seven years, Rachel Sussman, a photographer, has researched, worked with biologists and travelled all over the world to photograph continuously living organisms 2,000 years old and older. The project spans disciplines, continents, and millennia: it is part art and part science, it has an innate environmentalism and is driven by philosophic inquiry. Rachel began at ‘year zero,’ and looked back from there. This original index of millennia-old organisms has never before been compiled in the arts or the sciences. From an artistic perspective, she says that she hopes to foster a means of personal connection with an experience of deep time and long-term thinking. From an environmental perspective, the aim is to raise awareness of the existence of (and advance protection for) the planet’s most elderly inhabitants. From a scientific perspective, it has the potential to open up dialogue and serious enquiry into a wealth of previously untapped knowledge – global species longevity. As part of the project, Rachel makes large-scale colour photographs which are exhibited in galleries and museums. Rachel received a grant to complete the project during 2011 in order to photograph approximately eight more individuals, including 5,000-year-old moss in Antarctica, a 4,000-year-old Cypress in Iran, and a 43,000-year-old shrub in Tasmania.
