Dornith Doherty: STOW

Houston Center for Photography (HCP) presents Dornith Doherty: STOW. Opening Reception May 13. On View: May 13 – July 10, 2016.

Since 2008 Dornith Doherty has worked in an ongoing collaboration with renowned biologists the most comprehensive international seed banks in the world: the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service’s National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Colorado, the Millennium Seed Bank, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in England; and PlantBank, Threatened Flora Centre, and Kings Park Botanic Gardens in Australia.

In this era of climate change and declining biodiversity, by collecting, researching seed biology, and storing seeds in secure vaults, seed banks play a vital role in ensuring the survival of genetic diversity in wild and agricultural species.

Utilizing the archives’ on-site x-ray equipment that is routinely used for viability assessments of accessioned seeds, she documents 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 not only of the complex philosophical, anthropological, and ecological issues surrounding the role of science and human agency in relation to gene banking, but also of the poetic questions about life and time on a macro and micro scale. Doherty is struck by the power of these tiny plantlets and seeds (many are the size of a grain of sand) to generate life and to endure the time span central to the process of seed banking, which seeks to make these sparks last for two hundred years or more.

Use of the color delft/indigo blue evokes references not only to the process of cryogenic preservation, central to the methodology of saving seeds, but also to the intersection of east and west, trade, cultural exchange, and migration. Lenticular animations created from the collages present still-life images of an archive that appears to change color or move when viewed from different angles.

This tension between stillness and change reflects my focus on the elusive goal of stopping time in relation to living materials, which at some moment, we may all like to do.

Pictured: Doherty Dornith (Southlake, Texas) Wild Seedlings, 2015, From the series Archiving Eden, Inkjet print, 15 x 15 inches, Courtesy of Dornith Doherty, Moody Gallery (Houston) and Holly Johnson Gallery (Dallas)