Artefacts of a
Burning World

Opinionated collection of 38 articles, films, podcasts and other artefacts related to the climate crisis.

Book

The Oldest Living Things in the World

By Rachel Sussman
Photograph of a solitary tree standing on a rocky ground.
“It is imperative to the health of the planet, to the longevity of humans as a species, that we connect with timescales that are longer than our own.”

Since 2004, Brooklyn-based artist Rachel Sussman has explored harsh climates from Antarctica to the Mojave Desert to photograph the world’s oldest living organisms. This includes Pando, an aspen colony in Utah with a root system around 80,000 years old, and the Llareta plants in South America, which grow 1.5 cm annually and live for over 3,000 years. Despite their longevity, such ecosystems face threats from climate change and human activity.

Her photographs are meditations on “deep time” – timescales that are outside of our human, physiological experience of time – and often show the most versatile adaptation to the harsh climate conditions these organism are living in.