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Interviews: Ask Rachel Sussman About Photography and the Oldest Living Things
samzenpus writes Rachel Sussman is a photographer whose work covers the junction of art, science, and philosophy. Perhaps her most famous work is the "Oldest Living Things in the World" project. Working with biologists, she traveled all over the world to find and photograph organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Sussman gave a TED talk highlighting parts of the project including a clonal colony of quaking aspen 80,000-years-old and 2,000-year-old brain coral off Tobago's coast. Rachel has agreed to put down her camera and answer any questions you may have about photography or any of her projects. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.
Are you concerned that by photographing these rare organisms you may be drawing undesirable attention to them? That is, that someone might use your photos to locate them and steal or destroy them. Was there anything you did to mitigate such a risk?
Oy. The 2,000 year old man must be what? 2030, 2040 by now?
Gently reply
Aside from being able to reach a very old age do these species have anything else in common? For example, are their population pyramids correlated?
How do we define old? Do aspen groves count? If so, if I give birth to identical twins, are they one organism for the purpose of counting age, or must they be conjoined?
What about Turritopsis dohrnii? Or are pictures of tiny jellyfish uninteresting?
Any thoughts about the real ages of Adwaita, Henry, Tu'i Malila, Harriet,or Timothy? Do you think they have any thoughts about us? :)
Are there any precausions you must take to ensure you do not harm the organisms?
Photography is often thought of as a non-destuctive process. But as a nature photographer myself, I know that equipment like tripods, lighting units, and sometimes just being there can be harmful to wildlife.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
I am curious if your own best photos are different than your best published photos. I would think published photos would need to appeal to a larger audience while personal best photos only need to appeal to you. Have you ever had an editor say no to a photo that you thought was brilliant or amazing?
How do you feel being around things that were living when our culture was just at it infancy?
Or knowing that the aspens may have been a shelter for early humans (just guessing).
Do you feel a spiritual connection or more of a scientific respect?
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
So I'm not too knowledgeable on photography but one thing I'm aware of is that professional photographers do a lot of post processing. To the point of Adobe Lightroom or higher being so mandatory with DSLRs that they sometimes package it with lenses (especially the ones that distort like a wide angle lens). Do you post process your photos? To what extent? How do you feel about people who use advanced techniques like even adding color to their photos? For example, I came across this photo which was odd to me because I've been to that place and it's beautiful but not like in that photo -- it doesn't need fake pink clouds to be beautiful. It would seem to me a shame to have a tree live 2,000 years and then a human uses a fish eye lens on its knotted trunk to make it seem more old and gnarled and then later adjusts the darkness of the sky to give it a Halloween feel, etc. And then since that's the most artistic shot of it, that's how we remember it.
My work here is dung.
So, Nikon or Canon?
Awesome work. Great images of nature just seem to hit somewhere very primal and deep. The age of these things just makes it that much more incredible.
Question: When did you decide to undertake this project and did the journey take as long as you thought it would?
Having spent time with living things whose lifespans reach so far back into the past, what thoughts do you now have about the future? Have these encounters changed your approach to environmentalism, sustainability, future planning, or your everyday sense of time?
Do you think that pollution, radioactive materials, and climate change are going to start harming these ancient creatures in a way that they didn't have to worry about many years prior?
Saying that colonial organism like corals are tens of thousands years old is cheating IMO. The colony may be that old but the individual polyps are not.
You might as well say that the city of Rome is a 2500 year old "organism".
Plant life is one area where CITES can often be counter-productive.
The problem is that many rare plants that are found smuggled and seized by customs just end up getting burnt under the principle that they want to avoid anyone using customs itself as a back door route for bringing stuff into the country - i.e. bring it in, let customs seize it, then buy it back through a third party.
Ideally these specimens would instead be sent to botanical institutes and nurseries to cultivate for commercial sales which would remove pressure on in-habitat populations.
A friend who is a botanist in South America and has several newly discovered species to his name actually has to go through the process of distributing seeds for such species to such people he knows worldwide before he's named and described the plant, because stupidly it's legal to do so due to the fact it has not yet been described and hence cannot by definition be given a CITES rating that is used to prohibit movement in the first place. By distributing them legally as he does it ensures that nurserymen can start providing these new species commercially after he has formally described the species and after it has received a CITES certification meaning that there is little to no pressure on illegal collection of the species in the wild because people can just obtain them legally from the nurseries.
It's all very backwards, but the focus should be on better enabling ex-situ conservation such that those with the facilities to breed a new and/or endangered species can do so hence greatly reducing and often even removing the threat of habitat extinction.
For what it's worth though, for this particular photographer in question looking at her pictures I believe pretty much all the specimens on her site are widely known and well policed - I've seen some myself and for others I've known people who have visited. The locations of I think all these things are I believe neither secret nor hard to find so I don't think she's putting much at risk here. Whether there are more in her book whose locations are secret I've no idea though.