Siri Ekker Svendsen’s All the Whisperings of the World is a photo book examining the visual connections between nature’s vulnerability and the effects of an allergic shock to the body. To accomplish this, the artist takes us on a journey to contemporary rainforest areas in South America. The locus of this process is the Brazil nut.

The book weaves macro and micro perspectives with Svendsen’s classic black and white photographs, revealing the human body within a diverse ecosystem of complex interdependency. Images via microscope — body cells that have been destroyed due to allergic reactions — lead to images from scientific research on the body, flora, and fauna. A fragile connection is visualized, creating space to contemplate, fear, and grieve — All the Whisperings of the World is an elegiac yearning for the loss of diversity in nature, which we see is also our own habitat.

Svendsen’s project raises essential questions for a species learning in real-time about its irrefutable interconnectedness with the planet. We ask questions that once appeared distinct from the human experience — how do different plants in nature stand in a mutual dependence with each other? — as we spiral to the heart of the project. Examining the impact of flora on the body, we inevitably ask: To what extent is the human body included in this ecology of interdependence?