Dornith Doherty, Archiving Eden

Since 2008, Dornith Doherty photographed international seed banks and their preservation efforts in the face of climate change, the extinction of natural species, and decreased agricultural diversity. Serving as a global botanical backup system, these privately and publicly funded institutions assure the opportunity for reintroduction of species should a catastrophic event or civil strife affect a key ecosystem somewhere in the world. Using the archives’ on-site x-ray equipment utilized for viability assessments of accessioned seeds, I document and subsequently collage the seeds and tissue samples stored in these crucial collections. The amazing visual power of magnified x-ray images, which springs from the technology’s ability to record what is invisible to the human eye, illuminates my considerations of the complex philosophical, anthropological, and ecological issues surrounding the role of science and human agency in relation to gene banking.

A 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Dornith Doherty was born in Houston, Texas and received a B.A. cum laude from Rice University and a MFA in Photography from Yale University. She has been a member of the faculty of the University of North Texas since 1996. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, she is also a Fulbright Foundation Fellow, and has received grants from the Japan Foundation, the United States Department of the Interior, and the Indiana Arts Commission, among others. Doherty’s work has been featured in exhibitions in the Tucson Museum of Art, the Museum of Photography, Rafaela, Argentina, the Museum Belvédère, the Netherlands, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Bluecoat, Liverpool, England the Centro de Fotografía Isla de Tenerife, Spain and the Encuentros Abiertos Photography Biennial in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work is in numerous permanent collections.

Doherty’s work has been featured in the New Yorker Photobooth photography blog, American Way magazine, Smith Journal, Feature Shoot, SHFT, Oxford American Journal, SPOT, Fraction magazine, and Raw File Recent lectures include TEDx Monterey (2013), Keynote address at the National Photography Symposium, Liverpool, England (2011), and the Honored Educator Lecture, Society for Photographic Education South Central Conference (2012).