Rachel Sussman grew up in Baltimore, punctuated by stints in Santa Fe and Costa Rica. She began a practice-based fine arts PhD at Central Saint Martins College of Art in London in 2008 (now on indefinite hold), attended the Bard MFA program in 2008 and received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1998. Critic Jerry Saltz says of her Oldest Living Things in the World work: “These stately pictures quiet the soul…Sussman brings you to the place where science, beauty, and eternity meet.” Sussman is represented by Kneerim & Williams, and her first book is due out in spring of 2014 from the University of Chicago Press.
Sussman has spoken at TED, The Long Now Foundation, and UCLA, amongst others, and appeared on the air on CNN, the BBC, and various public radio programs. She was recently awarded a Change, Inc. grant, and nominated for the Prix Pictet for a third consecutive year. In 2011 she received a Creativity for Change grant from the Sculpt the Future Foundation, a West Prize Acquisition Award, and presented work at a United Nations/World Future Council event. In 2010 she received a $25,000 AOL 25 for 25 Artists & Innovators grant and was named 2010’s Best Photography Project of the Year on Kickstarter. In 2009 she was a finalist for the British Council’s Darwin Now award, and honored for outstanding work at the University of Pennsylvania’s Forum on Origins. She has been awarded artist's residencies at the Cooper Union, VSC, and the MacDowell Colony, where additionally she served as an officer on the Fellows Executive Committee from 2006 to 2012.
Her exhibition record spans more than a decade, in museums and galleries in the US and Europe, and her work has been featured on global media outlets including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and NPR’s Picture Show. Noted solo exhibitions include Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Montalvo Arts Center, Berlin Botanical Museum and Michael Steinberg Gallery. Noted group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Kunstverein Hannover, 2B Galeria in Budapest, Siamsa Tire in Ireland, Paris Photo, D21 Kunstraum and Pierogi Leipzig, Art Forum Berlin, and the Renaissance Society, Chicago. She is in discussion with several significant institutions regarding an exhibition to launch in conjunction with the publication of her book.
In addition to her photographs, Sussman’s writing can be found in Making the Geologic Now, a collection of essays by artists dealing with Geologic Time, as well as essays on longevity, eternity, and exploration on Brainpickings and Le Journal Spéciale'Z, Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture, Paris, and the Conservation Journal. A multiple-installment chronicle of her journey through Antarctica was published on the New York Times LENS blog. Recent reviews of her work can be found in Kunstformum (Germany), Arte e Critica (Italy), La Pura Vida, and a fall 2012 feature in Dear Dave magazine. Her work has been acquired for museum, university, corporate, and private collections.
In addition to her artwork, Sussman worked as an Interactive Producer for over 10 years and managed large teams and interdisciplinary projects ranging from NBC.com’s Homicide and Saturday Night Live websites to educational software projects employing speech recognition technologies. She also performed trapeze as part of the duo The Amazing Siblings in venues throughout New York, though her acrobatic career was cut short when she was sidelined by a rotator cuff injury.
Sussman lives in Brooklyn when she is not traveling.
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