Dornith Doherty

...Today, we know that the wealth of seeds is our opportunity to provide sufficient food to the growing world population even under severe conditions due to climate change, Environmental destruction and bioterrorism. That is why more than 1400 seed banks around the world keep the seeds of innumerable useful and wild plants, some in cardboard boxes, others in liquid nitrogen...

Nothing seems to exist in the arctic cold of the seed vault on Spitzbergen. And yet - frozen in the eternal ice is the cradle of our vegetable life. Archived for a future in which mankind is dependent on a botanical reboot. The photographer Dornith Doherty gives us a look into the archives of nature with her poetic photos "Archiving Eden"...

Spurred by the impending completion of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Archiving Eden explores the role of 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 the reintroduction of species should a catastrophic event or civil strife affect a key ecosystem somewhere in the world...

A 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, Dornith Dohertyreceived a MFA in Photography from Yale University. She currently resides in Southlake, Texas and is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, she has also received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the United States Department of the Interior. The Texas Legislature named her 2016 Texas State Artist 2D...

In the Arctic Circle, about 800 miles from the North Pole, on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, lies the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. A repository for the earth's seeds, Svalbard acts as a fail-safe freezer built within the permafrost to withstand time as well as natural and manmade disasters. It also serves as a backup for the hundreds of other more vulnerable gene banks around the world. The threat of climate change, decreasing agricultural diversity, extinctions, or a single catastrophic event has given rise to the need for such a safeguard, should reintroduction of species become necessary in the future...

Holly Johnson Gallery in Dallas is pleased to announce the opening of IT'S OFFICIAL, an exhibition honoring the recent appointments of four contemporary artists, as "Texas State Artists for 2015 & 2016"...

Photographer Dornith Doherty’s art has long been concerned with nature, with a focus on its intersection with human intervention. Since 2008 she’s been at work on Archiving Eden, an ambitious series of images documenting seed and tissue samples stored in the world’s seed banks...

Published on the occasion of Dornith Doherty's exhibition, Stow, the fifty page catalogue features an essay by art critic and essayist, John Zotos. The exhibition was held jointly at the University of North Texas' Artspace in downtown Dallas, as well as the Houston Center for Photography in 2016.

Available at the gallery.

Now in her third decade as a working artist, Dornith Doherty has never seemed to slow down or stop probing into...