The Topography of Tears is a visual investigation of tears photographed through an optical microscope. I started this project in 2008 during a period of life changes and grief.



The microscope gave me the means to examine my tears and beyond that, to visually evoke the unseen realm of’ emotions.



The random compositions I find in magnified tears often evoke a sense of place, like aerial views of emotional terrain. Although the empirical nature of tears is a composition of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, antibodies and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream. This series is like an ephemeral atlas.



Many variables influence the diversity among these images: whether the tear was air-dried or compressed, the volume of tear fluid, chemical/biological variations, microscope and camera settings, and how I process and print the photograph. Other variables remain unknown; there is limited scientific data available on the visual and chemical differences within emotional tears.



Tears are the medium of our most primal language in moments as unrelenting as death, as basic as hunger, and as complex as a rite 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. Shedding tears, shedding old skin. It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean.





© Rose-Lynn Fisher

all rights reserved





contact:

roselynnfisher8@gmail.com



Publisher:

Bellevue Literary Press



Gallery:

Craig Krull Gallery



Links to Selected Press

Online, Print & Blogs:



DARQUER LACE of Calais,

a collaboration



NPR

Brain Pickings

The New Yorker



Smithsonian Magazine



Harper's Magazine

Boston Globe

Paris Match (France)

ArtSixMic (France)

CBC Arts

LIFE Magazine China

B+W Photography (UK)

L.A.Weekly

Feature Shoot



Lenscratch

Wired



Amateur Photographer (UK)

Elizabeth Avedon Journal



GUP Magazine (NL)

Broadly



PRI / Studio 360



TiP - Balmond Studio (UK)

New Histories (UK)

The Guardian (UK)



The Paris Review



Palais de Tokyo (France)



Madame Le Figaro (France)



Polka Magazine (France)



Art Critique (France)

Observatoire de L'Art Contemporain (France)



Revue Feuilleton (France)

Rubikon (Germany)



Zeit Wissen Magazine (Germany)



Die Welt (Germany)



Psychologie Heute (Germany)



Y-Mag (Germany)

De Gids (Netherlands)

Esquire Russia



Yorokobu (Spain) 2

Yorokobu (Spain) 1

Lenscratch

British Cinematographer (UK)

In Vivo Magazine (Switzerland)



Galileo (Italy)



Design Observer



The Good Men Project



Juxtapoz



The Telegraph (UK)



Medical Daily



Happinez (NL)

Southwest the Magazine

Angelus

Big Think

The Swaddle (India)

Delo (Slovenia)



El Mundo (Spain)



Balthazare Magazine (France)



De Redactie (Belgium)



YLE News (Finland)



Garbo (Romania)



O Globo (Brazil)



Lettera43 (Italy)



Caffeinamagazine (Italy)



Spaghetti Mag. (Italy)



Dazed



Popular Science blog



The Daily Meal



Times of Malta



Lost at E Minor



PetaPixel



Refinery29



io9



PBS Nova Next Week

MSNBC Maddow blog/WeekGeek



BBC Taster (online)

Lifo (Greece)



Artinfinit (Moldova)



ABC (Spain)



La Nacion (Argentina)



Metro News Puerto Rico



Kindred Subjects



John Culbert - Geometry of tears



La/crime/ndays, a book of poetry by Giovanna Iorio

