Rose-Lynn Fisher has found a fascinating world of differences inside the tears we weep—be they from joy, frustration, grief, or cutting into a pungent onion.
In the tradition of Eadweard Muybridge‘s high-speed shots of everyday movements…
—which startled the public upon release…or Wilson Bentley‘s fabulous snowflake photography, prior to which scientists assumed most snowflakes were probably alike––
…Fisher uses the seemingly clinical eye of her microscope and camera to capture the surprising nuances of daily existence.
She’s found that among the 100 different tear samples collected and analyzed, the chemical makeup and appearance shift with every situation and reason…
…”Tears of grief”:
…”Tears of laughing till I’m crying”:
…”Onion tears”:
…”Tears of elation at a liminal moment”:
The microcosmic abstractions are gorgeous on their own, but paired with the artist’s strangely poetic descriptions of the fleeting moment when the tear sample fell, the project starts to evoke a larger sense of transience, the unpredictable and the unseen.
Read more about The Topography of Tears at the artist’s website.