Amazing Images of Human Tears Under the Microscope

Rose-Lynn Fisher’s amazing study titled ‘The Topography of Tears’ examines what our tears look like under the microscope.

With over 100 tears examined Rose-Lynn says “The project began in a period of personal change, loss, and copious tears. One day I wondered if my tears of grief would look any different from my tears of happiness – and I set out to explore them up close, using tools of science to make art and to ponder personal and aesthetic questions.”

Over the years the project studied a wide range of her own tears and those of others from happiness, laughing, sadness, yawning, birth, rejection, and even onions.

Rose-Lynn says “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 chemistry 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.”

“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.”

“I’m pleased if my artwork has something to add to a larger conversation, and if public interest helps motivate scientific inquiry that ultimately leads to deeper insight about the language and content of our tears.”