Rose-Lynn Fisher

Why the face, and not the tears that furrow it?

What is the true mask of our identity? The eyes are the spring from which tears well up. The face is the course of this river, and also its mouth.

We all cry. Human tears, however, are not always the same. In reality, they are divided into three distinct categories: basal, reflex, and psychic (or emotional).

The Topography of Tears is a contemplative visual study of tears that the author photographed through a standard optical microscope fitted with a digital microscopy camera. Begun during a period of grief, over the course of eight years, Rose-Lynn Fisher photographed a wide range of her own tears, along with some from other people. She shed tears directly onto glass slides, letting them evaporate or compressing a tear between the slide and a thinner glass coverslip. The air-dried tears thus revealed that their organic structures were similar to natural structures at all scales of nature: erosion patterns etched into the earth over a million years can resemble the branching or crystalline forms of evaporated tears. A terrain struck by emotion.

Although tears are a composition of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, antibodies, and enzymes, the topography of tears revealed momentary landscapes, like someone's fingerprint in a dream. A series of photographs that form an atlas of the soul's different landscapes. Each photographed emotional experience possesses its own unique visual character.