Artist Rachel Sussman spent a decade researching, working with biologists, and traveling all over the world to photograph continuously living organisms 2,000 years old and older. The work spans disciplines, continents, and millennia: it’s part art and part science, has an innate environmentalism, and is driven by existential inquiry. She begins at ‘year zero,’ and looks back from there, photographing the past in the present. Together, her portraits capture the living history of our planet – and what we stand to lose in the future.

Her book contains 124 photographs, 30 essays on her 30 subjects, original inforgraphics, and contributions by New York Times science columnist Carl Zimmer and world-renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Photography edited by Christina Louise Costello of MoMA. 

Foreign language translations in German and Korean are now in print, and simple & complex Chinese coming soon! For other foreign language inquires, please contact Brockman, Inc. The book is published in English by the University of Chicago Press and printed in Canada at Friesens. 

Visit Rachel's website to view a selection of images from the project →