“It is such a secret place, the land of tears.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The geologic complexity of that secret place is what photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher explores in The Topography of Tears — a striking series of duotone photographs of tears shed for a kaleidoscope of reasons, dried on glass slides and captured in a hundredfold magnification through a high-resolution optical microscope. What emerges is an enthralling aerial tour of the landscape of human emotion and its the most stirring eruptions — joy, grief, gladness, remorse, hope — reminding us that the terra incognita of our interiority is better trekked with an explorer’s benevolent curiosity about the varied beauty of the landscape than with a conquistador’s forceful intent to control and sublimate.
Tears after goodbye
Tears of change
Tears of Grief
Tears of possibility / hope
Tears of remorse
Overwhelmed tears
Tears of Redemption
Tears of Compassion
Onion tears
Tears for what couldn’t be fixed
