For the past five years, artist and photographer Rachel Sussman has traveled around the world documenting organisms that have lived for more than 2,000 years.
From 500,000-year-old actinobacteria in the Siberian permafrost and a lone spruce in Sweden, to a 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago’s coast and an “underground forest” in South Africa that predates the dawn of agriculture, Sussman’s images capture the robustness and fragility of life. While these organisms’ longevity dwarfs even that of human civilization, they all depend on ecosystems in fine balance — a balance thrown into question by human encroachment and climate change.
From her appearance at TEDGlobal 2010 in Oxford, UK, Rachel Sussman on The World’s Oldest Living Things.
