Searching for the world's oldest living things can seem like a romantic task pursued by explorers of bygone days—the Marco Polos and Ernest Shackletons of the earth who voyaged from sea to sea and pole to pole—not the passion of a Brooklynite with wanderlust and a penchant for aged specimens. But, that is what lights a fire in the curious mind of Ms. Rachel Sussman, who for five years has been tracking centuries-old trees and organisms around the globe and capturing them with her camera. Getting to the locations is an experience and education in and of itself, and then Rachel takes on the task of conveying these livings things' dignity and complexity while out in the desert, underwater, or in the forest.

Left: la llareta #0308-23b26 (up to 3,000 years old, atacama desert, chile); Right: spruce gran picea #0909-6B37 (9,5000 years old; fulufjället, sweden)

Recently featured on NPR's The Picture Show blog, Sussman speaks of being her first ancient discovery:

"I had gone to Japan with no real agenda — just knowing that I wanted to photograph. And ... people kept telling me, 'You have to go visit this tree that's called Jomon Sugi that's 7,000 years old."

After a two-day hike, Sussman found the tree. When she relayed the story to friends back home she realized that if she combined her interests of photography and art with nature and science it would make a great series.

Sussman finds subjects through both coincidence and deliberate pursuit, contacting researchers studying underwater forms, fungi and rare plants—and in one instance, serendipitously meeting a biologist at a New Year's Eve party who connected her to lichen in Greenland.

How does Rachel afford to trot the globe in search of these rare specimens, you ask? That's where Kickstarter comes in. Rachel has announced a project to continue funding her work and is trying to raise a goal of $10,000 in the next 66 days. If she meets her goal, the funds will be used to help her pursue 10 organisms on her list to find and photograph so the project can be turned into a book. She writes of her mission:

I'm developing this unique index of living organisms with exceptional longevity at a critical juncture in our collective trajectory: how will the natural world fare in the face of climate change? Part art, part science, part philosophy, I hope to tease out themes of longevity, sustainability, the natural sublime and mortality through the work.

Help Rachel get to the Antarctic Peninsula to find 5,000 year-old moss, go backpacking in Tasmania for 10 - 43,000 year-old clonal shurms and visit a 2,300 year-old Banyan Fig tree in Sri Lanka. Because even if none of us can go with her, wouldn't it be nice to live vicariously through Rachel's explorations and hang a photo of a 9,500 year-old Swedish Spruce Gran Picea tree in our living rooms? We think so.

For those of you armchair travelers, you can also follow along with Rachel's project on the OLTW blog.

p.s. There is just one 30"x40" print left of Rachel's 20x200 edition, Towards Christiana. Snap it up before it becomes extinct!