For 10 years, Brooklyn-based artist and photographer Rachel Sussman traveled around the world documenting the oldest living organisms on the planet.
A fascinating blend of art, science and philosophy, her amazing photographs of ancient trees, plant life and lakes aged 2,000 years and older are accompanied by descriptions detailing their age and location.
They are now compiled in a book titled The Oldest Living Things in the World, which was released last month.
Deeply profound and breathtaking in its scope, it explores the themes of time and impermanence, revealing the complex mysteries of life of which there is still so much that we don’t know about.
“What does it mean when the organic goes head-to-head with the geologic? We start talking about deep time and the quotidian in the same breath, along with all the strata in between. All of these organisms are living palimpsests: they contain myriad layers of their own histories within themselves, along with records of natural and human events; new chapters written over the old, year after year, millennium after millennium. When we look at them in the frame of deep time, a bigger picture emerges, and we start to see how all of the individuals have stories, and that all of those stories are in turn interconnected–and in turn, inextricably connected to us all,” she states in her book’s preface.
Check out some of her photographs below and find out more about her project here.
[via Beautiful Decay and Brain Pickings, images via Rachel Sussman]