“One day I wondered if my tears of grief could 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” says R.L Fisher. The Topography of Tears is a photographic study of 100 tears, photographed through a standard light microscope. The photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher has explored the spectrum of our emotions from onions to sorrow, frustration, laughter and yawns through an extensive survey of both her own and collaborators tears.
Describing the work as an ‘ephemeral atlas,’ the unique patterns that occur in each of her catalogued experiences, offers a moving acknowledgment of something both scientific and of shared collective understanding. She makes no scientific claims of her study, instead offering an insight into ‘the poetry of life.’
