"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," says Rose-Lynne Fisher. So she started The Topography of Tears -- a study of 100 tears photographed through an optical microscope. Below, for example, is a tear of grief next to tear from a "liminal moment of elation":



"Roaming microscopic vistas, I marvel at the visual similarities between micro and macro realms, how the patterning of nature seems so consistent, regardless of scale. Patterns of erosion etched into earth over millions of years may look quite similar to the branched crystalline patterns of an evaporated tear that took less than a minute to occur," she adds.