Deep Time:
Ancient Lives and Modern Eyes

Rachel Sussman and Ursula K Heise: In Conversation

Artist Rachel Sussman has traveled around the world to photograph organisms—trees, lichens, bacteria—that are 2,000 or more years old. Confronting lives that extend so much longer than human lifespans challenges us to rethink the context of our human communities and the more-than-human environments into which we are embedded. What does it mean to take a picture of a 4,000-year-old tree at a fraction of a second? How has human intervention in nature given rise to a new geological age? Sussman, a LACMA Lab Artist and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Oldest Living Things in the World, and Ursula K. Heise, a professor in the Department of English and the Institute of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, will discuss these questions of nature, technology, and our understanding of time to the backdrop of Sussman’s stunning images.