The Topography of Tears

＂Looking at [these] photographs feels like staring out a plane window at the passing landscape below.＂ ?Studio 360

＂A moving depiction of the micro and macro aspects of our emotional lives, and a beautiful means of integrating the often separate realms of science and art.＂ ?Refinery29

Does a tear shed while chopping onions look different from a tear of happiness? In this powerful collection of images, an award-winning photographer trains her optical microscope and camera on her own tears and those of men, women, and children, released in moments of grief, pain, gratitude, and joy, and captured upon glass slides. These photographs reveal the beauty of recurring patterns in nature and present evocative, crystalline imagery for contemplation. Underscored by poetic captions, they translate the mysterious act of crying into an atlas mapping the structure and magnificence of our interior lives.

Rose-Lynn Fisher is an artist and the author of the International Photography Award-winning studies Bee and The Topography of Tears. Her photographs are exhibited in museums across the world, including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Museum of Science in Boston, the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History. They have also been featured by the Dr. Oz Show, NPR, Smithsonian magazine, Harper’s, the New Yorker, Time, Wired, Reader’s Digest, Discover, Brain Pickings, and elsewhere. She received her BFA from Otis Art Institute and lives in Los Angeles.