DORNITH DOHERTY: Vault

Door, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 2010

Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Boxes Outside, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 2010
Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Interior, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 2010
Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Nordic Genetic Resource Center Seed Vials
Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Bag of Seeds, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, 2009
Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Cryogenic Racks, National Center for Genetic Preservation, 2009
Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Seed Head 1, 2010 from the series Archiving Eden
Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Whip It, 2009 from the series Archiving Eden
Photograph © Dornith Doherty/ All rights reserved

Arctic Svalbard

Dornith Doherty and her view camera, Svalbard

Photographer Dornith Doherty traveled close to the North Pole to photograph the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (also known as the Doomsday Vault, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the most diverse assembly of the world's food crops). "Seed banks conserve clones or seeds at a certain point of perfection and then “stop time” to try and prevent the botanical materials from changing further," photographer Dornith Doherty explained to me last year when viewing her series Archiving Eden. "Since perfect stasis is not possible, I have used the lenticular process to create powerful images that show the tension between stillness and change. This technology allows for the appearance or disappearance of parts of the image as well as refractive color changes." I spoke with Dornith recently about her expedition to photograph the world's largest seed bank in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago.

EA: What is the background for your series Archiving Eden?

DD: In the process of photographing at the National Center for Genetic Resource Preservation (NCGRP), in Fort Collins, Colorado, I noticed they were using a tabletop x-ray machine to test the viability of accessioned seeds. I was fascinated by the images I saw and this led to my using the x-ray equipment to make images of seeds and tissue samples from their seed and clone collections. Later, I was able to work at the Millennium Seed Bank in England in much the same way. The collaboration with the scientists has been fruitful, and the scientist at the NCGRP grows samples for me to photograph. Upon return to my studio in Texas, I make the collages that are part of "Archiving Eden".

EA: The images in Archiving Eden have a sacred quality to them.

DD: The photographs pose questions about life and time on a micro and macro scale for me. I am struck by the visual connections – some look like astronomical bodies or microscopic cells. When I work with x-rays, you are literally gazing into the plantlets and seeds- things you cannot see with an unaided eye. Tiny (many are the size of a grain of sand or smaller) seeds that generate life remain simultaneously delicate and powerful. The scale of time that is ingrained in the process of seed banking, which seeks to make these sparks last for two hundred years or more, makes the life cycle very much on my mind while I work. I also contemplate the elusive goal of stopping time in relation to living materials, which at some moment, we would all like to do.

EA: What inspired you to travel to the remote archipelago near the North Pole to photograph the Svalbard Global Seed Vault?

DD: Archiving Eden and Vault were inspired by an article I read about the Vault in the New Yorker Magazine two years before I went to photograph there. When I encountered John Seabrook’s article (Annals of Agriculture, Sowing for the Apocalypse) I was inspired by the dichotomous hopeful/pessimistic nature of the project; on one hand volunteers and governments from around the world were collaborating to create a global botanical back-up system, and on the other hand the gravity of climate change and political instability created the need for an inaccessible ark.

I immediately wanted to photograph it.

It was not until two years later; after I had initiated Archiving Eden and had traveled and photographed at other large and comprehensive seed banks, that I received an invitation to photograph the Vault from Cary Fowler, the Director of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. You can't imagine the thrill it was to open that e-mail.

EA: How difficult was it to travel there?

DD: The Vault is only open a few days a year when new seeds are placed in the vault. It took two days to fly there, and although the airport has one scheduled flight each day, it’s the type of place where a small metal staircase is rolled across the tarmac to the airplane door. I arrived on the same plane as the Director Cary Fowler and Ola Westengen, the operation manager for the Vault. Time was short, so I changed into warm clothes in the airport washroom, and we drove directly to the Vault to begin work.

When you travel outside populated areas on Svalbard, polar bears can be a problem, and many people carry guns. As I traveled to photograph the landscape, helpful people I meet would explain how to tell if there might be a polar bear nearby, since they are completely camouflaged. One of the best ways to detect a polar bear, I was told, is that if you are near a place that is frequented by seals, and there are no seals, that means there is a polar bear watching you. I never saw any seals; only reindeer, so apparently I was in constant danger of polar bear attack.

EA: How did you feel when you first faced the actual door of the Vault before going in and on entering the tunnel leading to the storage area?

DD: It was a very memorable moment. I was filled with awe. Standing in front of the vault in the bitter cold was the culmination of two years of work and planning, and surprisingly, the experience of traveling to someplace remote with cumbersome equipment to take photographs of a significant place brought to mind the photographic practice of some of my favorite photographers, for example; Timothy O’Sullivan or E.O. Goldbeck.

The Vault itself looks elegantly minimal; you see the rough rock walls of the mountain fitted with concrete floors and metal doors. I was surprised to see that Ola and Cary unloaded the shipment themselves and rolled the boxes down the long tunnel to a space outside of the vault in a simple wagon.

The tunnel was dark and had thin ribbons of ice flowing towards the base. As you can see from the photograph, the Vault door is covered with ice crystals and has a closed-circuit TV monitor mounted outside. I was captivated by looking at a mediated image of the vault as I photographed it. The door is not on axis with the tunnel, and Cary explained there is a small curved wall in line with the tunnel engineered to disperse a blast radius in case of terrorist attack. Originally, no outsider was allowed into the actual vault, so the TV monitor was installed so that a visitor could see inside without entering the vault. When I entered, the roar of the compressors, the extreme cold, and the systematic organization were in striking contrast to the organic nature of the seeds.

The vault is kept at a very specific low temperature and humidity to ensure the longevity and viability of the collection. However, since the vault is below the permafrost line, if electricity fails, the archive should be okay.

A background note-Since much of my work has to do with landscape, my equipment is optimized for the extreme heat you encounter in the American Southwest. I had to research and purchase almost everything, from boots and gloves to batteries. At the suggestion of several fellow-photographers, I brought a digital slr camera as a back up to my view camera. Surprisingly, because of the twelve hour days working at below freezing temperatures, the digital slr would freeze after 8 hours but my point and shoot and view camera never failed. Since we live in the digital post-film era, I liked how the failure of the digital slr camera and the success of the 19th century technology of the view camera mirrored the operations philosophy of the vault- trying to keep things simple and fail-safe.

EA: The Director, Cary Fowler, has said "This is a Library of Life". Is there a sense of The History of the World' while inside the world's food archive?

DD: Yes, you feel the importance of the place, although it seems more cultural than historical. Some countries do not have an infrastructure that can support their efforts very effectively. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supports the cost of shipping their collections, and it was very moving to see humble paper boxes of seeds that were sent from poor nations, compared to the relatively high-tech shipments of industrialized, wealthy nations.

VAULT: Photographs by Dornith Doherty
Exhibition to February 8, 2011
The Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, Denton, Texas

Gallery Talk With Dornith Doherty
Jan 19, 2011 7pm

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE: Alfred Stieglitz Photo 1 of 10 Most Expensive Ever Sold

Georgia O'Keeffe
Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Hands, 1918
Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

"Hands" (Georgia O'Keeffe's) by Alfred Stieglitz sold for almost $1.5 million dollars at a 2006 Sotheby’s auction. View The Ten Most Expensive Photographs In The World Ever Sold. Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: AN INTERVIEW / Update: Sculptor Louise Bourgeois died at home at 98

An Interview With Louise Bourgeois
Front Cover: Photograph (c) Richard Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Back Cover: Polished Bronze Sculpture (c) Louise Bourgeois

Maman by Louise Bourgeois
Spider Sculpture outside the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain

Arch of Hysteria, 1993
Polished Bronze (c) Louise Bourgeois /All Rights Reserved

Art is not about art

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New York Times Obituary

Artist and sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, born in Paris December 25, 1911, died at home May 31, 2010 at 98 years old. She began her career as a draftsman at 12, providing drawings for the missing pieces of tapestries for her families business. At 15 she studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, then began studying painting at the École du Louvre and the École des Beaux-Arts, later working as assistant to Fernand Léger. After moving to the U.S. with her American husband, art historian and Director of the Museum of Primitive Art of New York, Robert Goldwater, she studied at the Art Students League of New York.

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The following excerpts are from An Interview With Louise Bourgeois, by American Art Critic, Donald Kuspit, published under the imprint "Elizabeth Avedon Editions | Vintage Contemporary Artists" by Random House (Here):

DK: You have spoken of (your art) as encompassing the whole history of art, but I wonder if you have any special consciousness of modern art. What do you think about modern art in general? How do you see yourself in the history of modern art?

LB: I am not interested in art history, in the academies of styles, a succession of fads. Art is not about art. Art is about life, and that sums it up. This remark is made to the whole academy of artists who have attempted to derive the art of the late eighties, to try to relate it to the study of the history of art, which has nothing to do with art. It has to do with appropriation. It has to do with the attempt to prove that you can do better than the next one, and that a famous art history teacher is better than the common artist. If you are a historian, you have to have the dignity of a historian. You don't have to prove that you are better than the artist.

But I can say this. I studied in Paris in the thirties at a time when artists had the ateliers that were open to students. My favorite teachers among many were Fernand Léger, Othon Friesz, and Paul Colin. Michèle Leiris and André Breton were also part of my education. Also, I taught for a long time and was given many honorary doctorates. Flattering as it is, it has little to do with my ongoing self-expression. Also, I valued my friendships with Corbusier, Duchamp, and Miró, Arp, Brancusi and Franz Kline and Warhol. Today I value my friendships with Robert Mapplethorp and Gary Indiana.

DK: Which artists do you like?

LB: I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick. And also, Bacon is not self-indulgent. Some people will say, "What do you mean by that? He always paints the same picture." That's true–he always paints the same picture, because he is driven. But he is not self-indulgent. Never.

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LB: I think I know why the Museum of Modern Art did not buy my work. The truth is very difficult to speak of. There was a certain style of collecting at the Modern which had to do with...I think I should watch my words.

DK: Why? Don't watch your words. You have lived long enough to tell the truth.

LB: Well, it had to do with the trustees, with pleasing the trustees. Alfred Barr was not a trustee; he was an employee, like all the rest. The trustees had real buying power. Alfred Barr had special skills, but he was not part of the Board of Trustees. He was on the other side. The artists who succeeded in selling at the time–Calder, Mark Rothko, Ben Shahn, they were the three–pleased the trustees. You had to entertain the Board, and these Three Stooges knew how to do that, knew how to socially entertain these important people, these trustees. I did not mind that, as a woman, but I could not do it.

Women had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women–women who had money. They wanted to be entertained–they were lazy and sometimes stupid, and they wanted to be entertained by men of a certain age. So these charmers were what was called in the eighteenth century a pique-assiette in French, somebody who picks at your plate, who will come entertain for dinner, like a buffoon–it is a kind of profession that interests me very much. And they are picked from among artists because there is a certain prestige to being an artist, but from a professional point of view they are more entertainers than artists. They relate to the storyteller, which was a profession. The storytellers of the Middle Ages were men who went from place to place, telling their tales, and sometimes reached the top because of their acting and verbal abilities.

Because of the profession of my husband, I lived among these people. It was interesting. And because I was French and kind of discreet, they tolerated me–with my accent I was a little strange, I was not competition–and I was cute, I guess. They took me seriously on a certain level, but they refused to help me professionally. The trustees of the Museum of Modern Art were not interested in a young woman coming from Paris. They were not flattered by her attention. They were not interested in her three children. I was definitely not socially needed then. They wanted male artists, and they wanted male artists who did not say they were married. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in–older women and younger men.

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DK: Why do you think the Museum of Modern Art finally gave you a retrospective exhibition?

LB: It had to do with one person, that wonderful, wonderful woman, Deborah Wye. She worked very, very hard. She convinced them, she got all the information...she convinced them that I was important.

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In 1982, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, exhibited a retrospective exhibition organized by Deborah Wye. Bourgeois was 70 years old. In 2008, The Tate Modern Museum, London, organized and exhibited a major retrospective of Bourgeois’s work which traveled to the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In 2009, the retrospective traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC.

Louise Bourgeois, Les Fleurs, 2009 Gouache and Silkscreen on Paper,
Wooster Group Benefit Auction March 15th. Estimated value $15,000.

March 15th Wooster Group Benefit Live Auction

Artwork for auction includes Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Chuck Close, Jasper johns, Jeff Koons and view Artists here