The-Contemporary is proud to present Archiving Eden, curated by independent curator Erin Joyce. Dornith Doherty's Archiving Eden is a photographic series that works in tandem with prestigious biologists at two of the world’s most comprehensive international seed banks: the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service’s National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Colorado, and the Millennium Seed Bank, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in England.

Doherty was inspired to archive images at Svalbard, Norway that represent not only the hopeful and pessimistic nature of Svalbard, but also the poetic questions about life and time through her lens. Svalbard is the first truly global botanical back-up system as the gravity of climate change and political instability created the need for an ultra-modern, inaccessible “doomsday vault” near the North Pole. She has used the lenticular process to create powerful images that show the tension between stillness and change. As both a Fulbright Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, Doherty is immersed in this ongoing project of documenting and telling the story of the global seed vaults.