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Using X-ray equipment, US artist Dornith Doherty has worked with biologists since 2008 at seed banks around the world to capture seeds in suspended animation. This digital collage of husk corn ‘landraces’, or domesticated varieties, shifts from green to yellow to brown as viewers walk past, illustrating how seeds change as they are dried cryogenically.
Photograph: Dornith Doherty/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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A seed vault at Kuban experimental station in Russia where Doherty found shelves of jars each containing different varieties of soya bean seeds, just some of the 330,000 seed types conserved there. Doherty found the scale of the effort to protect seeds ‘awe-inspiring’ – in St Petersburg, a dozen scientists starved to death safeguarding seeds during a second world war siege.
Photograph: Dornith Doherty/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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Trees and Seedlings by California-based artist Sant Khalsa aims to address both the fragility and resilience of nature. Her artworks are constructed from wooden planks in varying sizes with high-contrast photographs of trees burned in wildfires held between glass. Fire can be both regenerative and destructive – these particular ponderosa pines require fire for natural propagation.
Photograph: Sant Khalsa/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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In spring 1992, Khalsa planted 1,000 ponderosa pines as part of an attempt to reforest the Holcomb valley that had been clearcut by settlers during the southern California gold rush of 1860. She returned 25 years later to find 40ft (12-metre) high trees providing habitats for birds and other wildlife. Her Growing Air collection documents these changes to the San Bernardino national forest landscape.
Photograph: Sant Khalsa/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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London-based photographer Chrystel Lebas set out to uncover the stories behind an anonymous set of glass negatives found in the Natural History Museum that dated back to the start of the 20th century. She discovered they were the work of the British botanist Sir Edward James Salisbury (1886-1978). He took this photo of Arrochar, near Loch Long in Scotland, in 1928.
Photograph: Sir Edward James Salisbury/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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With Salisbury’s field notes in hand, Lebas retraced his footsteps, travelling to the places he photographed in Scotland, Devon and Norfolk between 1914 and 1933. She took this photo, titled Revisiting Scirpus, at Arrochar at low tide in 2012. She found a salt-tolerant marsh dominated by sea clubrush had been replaced by open water and the surrounding diverse forest of oak, ash and birch had been replaced by managed conifer forests.
Photograph: Chrystel Lebas/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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When Lebas learned from Salisbury’s notes that he was unable to find rocket growing, she was keen to see if it had gone extinct in the wild. By chance, she found some growing in between the paving stones near her home in London. She experimented with colour filtration to create this picture of it.
Photograph: Chrystel Lebas/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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Heidi Morstang’s 15-minute film Prosperous Mountain (2013) tells the story of the Svalbard global seed vault, based on a remote island between mainland Norway and the north pole. The vault is built deep inside a mountain in the permafrost, where the freezing cold ground preserves the seeds. This is the largest secure seed store in the world. The Crop Trust calls it the ‘final backup’.
Photograph: Heidi Morstang/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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The Svalbard global seed vault on the Arctic archipelago stores duplicates of one-third of the world’s food crop seeds. It currently holds more than 1m seed samples, and provides a back up for the world’s gene banks. If natural disaster strikes or wars break out and food security is threatened, the doors could be opened for these seeds to be sown. This 100m-long tunnel that leads to the vault is only accessed once or twice a year for global deliveries.
Photograph: Heidi Morstang/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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This electron micrograph depicts seeds of Svalbard flora collected by Arctic biologist Prof Pernille Bronken Eidesen. This photo is one of 12 taken by Morstang for her series Ringhorndalen using a special microscope and chosen to resemble the physical landscape of where the seeds were collected.
Photograph: Heidi Morstang/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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Fascinated by how taxonomists at Kew Gardens’ herbarium in London identify new plant species, visual artist Liz Orton’s photo collection Splitters and Lumpers explores the two methods of classification that emphasise both difference and similarities between species. While they await sorting, these unmounted plant specimens are hidden from public view.
Photograph: Liz Orton/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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Orton’s behind-the-scenes images show the efforts of experts to create a more complete scientific picture of plant life. An estimated 2,000 new species are discovered every year. Orton’s photographs show specimens spilling over the edge of the paper. The layers are not yet fixed – a reminder that any plant classification is really a hypothesis and never an absolute. Seedscapes: future-proofing nature is an Impressions Gallery touring exhibition curated by Liz Wells in association with the Dick Institute and RAMM
Photograph: Liz Orton/Courtesy of Impressions Gallery
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