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Natural Magic by Jordan Bear Three up and coming 19th-century scholars offer new views on the use and employment of the salted paper print photographic process in North America. Learn more | See related books
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Product Details
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1st edition (April 14, 2014)
I agree with the other two reviewers who gave this book five stars, but I don't think they touched on what was so meaningful to me about the book. The photography is good, even though many of the subjects don't really lend themselves to easy framing or notable settings - try photographing a fungus if you don't believe me. The theme is engaging as well, but what really made this book for me were the stories, thoughts, ponderings that accompany each chapter. Despite writing only about living things over 2,000 years old, Sussman has made this into an intensely personal book, part story, part quest, and all heart. Please read this, you'll be better for having done so.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
A tree 2000 years old, another a 13,000, and a clonal copse of trees 70,000 years old - or maybe a few hundred thousand. Bacteria somewhere around a half-million years old. Yet odder beings in the thousands to ten-thousand-plus range. If the individual organism isn't at least 2000 years old, it doesn't make the cut.
This book is simply awe-inspiring - to be among beings that live such lives, where ice ages might come and go around the one individual. That time scale simply boggles the mind. Then the chill sets in: a few of these beings have died since their pictures were taken. A tree of 3000 years succumbed to fire, another of 13,000 was killed in a construction project. What lived so long can die in minutes, and you can't just plant some seeds and grow a new one, not 13,000 years old. Gone, after all that time, because of natural hazards or human carelessness.
And, in the current Great Extinction, we'll lose a lot more, mostly never having known they ever lived. Environmental threats and climate change can move faster than these living things can respond. I find it humbling, too - so few human artifacts or cultures have the power to last as long as these beings have.
Although the naturalist who collected these images took care with proper identification, she's not a scientist by trade. She's an artist, a photographer. But she's a part of the scientific venture, too, making it humanly understandable, even personal, and stirring the sense of awe and respect that underlies nearly all scientific research. (I first became aware of this book through a review in Science magazine.) Really, she just proves that the dichotomy of science and art is artificial and arbitrary, more an artifact of the viewer's preconceptions than of the fields themselves. This has my highest recommendation.
-- wiredweird
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41 of 47 people found the following review helpful
Author/photographer Sussman is motivated by the death of the Senator tree near Orlando Florida in early January, 2012 - 3,500 years old, killed by a fire likely human caused. (There was no lightning recorded in the area during the weeks prior, and the tree had recently been provided with its own lightning rod.) Fortunately she had already photographed it in 2007 as part of her focus on living organisms 2,000 years and older.
The Senator tree is not the only seemingly immortal treasure damaged/killed by man - there's a 3,000+ year-old chestnut tree near Mt. Etna in which someone tried to grill sausages inside it. Fortunately, that tree was saved and a protective fence since erected.
Other such treasures are also threatened from time to time - thankfully she's well into her work. Sussman has also traveled to Greenland that grow only 1 cm. every hundred years, Tasmania to record a 43,000-year old shrub, a dense bush in Chile's Atacama Desert that is as much as 3,000 years old, etc.
I was surprised to learn that creosote bushes, of which there are many in my yard, have been estimated at 12,000 years-old in the Mohave Desert. Turns out they grow-out from a center via circular expansion of roots. So, mine may also be very, very old as well. The really good news - they can survive up to two years without water. Quaking Aspen in Utah, underground forests in South Africa, and other trees/bushes spread out similarly from a very old center. Olive trees may be 3,000 years old.
There's also 5,500-year-old moss on Elephant Island in Antarctica (looks deceptively like ordinary moss), and younger (2,200 year-old moss) growing atop 9,000-year-old fossilized remains of its predecessors. Oldest of all - 400,000 to 600,000 year-old Siberian bacteria (microscopic), and still alive, per the experts.
Truly an awe-inspiring work.
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31 of 35 people found the following review helpful
I love the exploration of very old things, and there are some fantastic photos. The commentary is a little strange though, with meandering narratives that mention personal romantic dramas that are totally irrelevant to the topic.
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful
‘The Oldest Living Things in the World’ photographed and written by Rachel Sussman is an impressive collection of beautiful photos and high-quality texts that lead us through history to the present, raising many interesting questions about our future.
The artist Rachel Sussman for last ten years conducted an extensive research helped by the biologists, travelling around the world and taking photos of the flora that is 2 000 years old or even older.
With her pictures taken all around the world, in the areas with eternal snow, or places where a drop of rain has not fallen for an eternity, Rachel has managed with her objective to convey emotions and beauty of ancient life which is kind of hard to express in words - it must be seen and felt in her photographs.
Except the reader can enjoy her photographs, equally valuable, educating and useful are the author texts, among other things, based on the work of scientists which explored the subjects of her photos – they will occupy readers, offering the opportunity to learn about the many beauties and variety of life on Earth for which unfortunately we realize how little do we know after the last page of her impressive book is closed.
80 000 years old colony of aspen trees in Utah, moss older than 5 000 years on Antarctica and almost 44 000 years old shrub on Tasmania are just some of the jewels of which you will find out between the covers of this book, about which you probably just like I did not know anything.
Therefore, ‘The Oldest Living Things in the World’ is both a work of art thanks to the photographs author provided, a scientific work because of the writings found inside - in a word, breathtaking comprehensive experience given by Rachel Sussman which you will continually enjoy, just like me since I picked up for the first time this book in my hands.
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