The Topography of Tears: A Stunning Aerial Tour of the Landscape of Human Emotion Through an Optical Microscope - Rose Lynn Fischer
An year back, last June in fact, I'd written about 'Water Consciousness', a series of experiments to show how human consciousness has an impact on the molecular structure of water.
Today when I read this, it amazed me all over again. How our feelings get reflected in our 'tears'.
An year back, last June in fact, I'd written about 'Water Consciousness', a series of experiments to show how human consciousness has an impact on the molecular structure of water.
Today when I read this, it amazed me all over again. How our feelings get reflected in our 'tears'.
The compilation is a striking series of photographs of tears shed for a kaleidoscope of reasons, dried on glass slides and captured in a hundredfold magnification through a high-resolution optical microscope, a project nearly a decade in the making.
What emerges is an enthralling tour of the landscape of human emotion and its most stirring eruptions; joy, grief, gladness, remorse, hope.
In the introduction, Fisher reflects on the symbolic undertones of this inquiry into 'the intangible poetry of life', and states:
"Though the empirical nature of tears is a composition of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream. The accumulation of these images is like an ephemeral atlas.
Tears are the medium of our most primal language in moments as unrelenting as death, as basic as hunger, and as complex as rites of passage. They are the evidence of our inner life overflowing its boundaries, spilling over into consciousness. Wordless and spontaneous, they release us to the possibility of realignment, reunion, catharsis, intractable resistance short-circuited… It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean."
Here are some of the pictures:
Tears of grief
Tears of change
Tears of remorse
Tears of elation at a liminal moment
Tears of Timeless Reunion
I have been using this series of pictures for several years in my Latin class. The word for tears in Latin is "lacrima" and the English derivative is "lachrymal" - the vessel used over the years to collect tears. (we read it in the Bible - the prostitute caught in the act of sin but forgiven by Jesus after confession. we also know that the lachrymal was used during wars - in American history, Civil War women captured tears until the beloved soldiers returned. The tears were presented as prayers for their soldier.)
ReplyDeleteStudents are always fascinated by these slides of tears.
Perhaps you know this already.
Thank you for posting these.
Marci
Hey Marci! Nice to see you write in, it was wonderful for me to revisit the slides after so many years. And to think you use the slides in latin class....beautiful :)
DeleteI'm myself learning Sanskrit now, and I see the richness of these ancient languages, so even more touched. Thanks again.