A 2012 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Dornith Doherty was born in Houston, Texas and received a B.A. cum laude from Rice University and an MFA in Photography from Yale University. She currently resides in Southlake and is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas, where she has been on the faculty since 1996. In addition to the Guggenheim Fellowship, she has also received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Indiana Arts Commission, the United States Department of the Interior, the University of North Texas, and the Houston Center for Photography. Spurred by the completion of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Dornith Doherty began Archiving Eden in 2008 as a way to explore the role of seed banks and their preservation efforts in the face of climate change and the extinction of natural species. She found the simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic nature of the Svalbard Vault compelling: individuals and governments from around the world collaborating to create the first truly global botanical back-up system, but also, the gravity of climate change and political instability created the need for an inaccessible “Doomsday Vault” near the North Pole. As Archiving Eden developed, collaboration became an important facet of the project. She worked closely with biologists at twenty seed banks scattered across four continents to gain special access and understanding of the collections, and through this critical research Doherty developed a dual approach. Documentary images in the series record the spaces and technological interventions required to store seeds and clones in a state of suspended animation. Accompanying digital collages, made using on-site x-ray equipment, are a more intimate exploration of individual seeds and plant samples stored in these crucial collections. These magnified images illuminate poetic questions about life and time on a macro and micro scale.