The common honey bee as landscape

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In Rose-Lynn Fisher’s new book ‘Bee,’ the artist offers a close look at the common honey bee. A very, very close look.

Using a friend’s electron microscope, Fisher explores the bee in a variety of magnifications. At 10x or 30x resolution the images mostly look insect-like, but when she magnifies a pollen press 85x or an antenna 1700x crazy things start happening:The images take on an otherworldly feel that has nothing to do with the buzzing pollinator we alternately greet with joy and fear. Instead we might be looking at an underwater landscape, or some kind of alien worm.

Many of us have encountered electron microscope images before whether in high school science textbooks, or on the Discovery Channel, but very rarely is it an artist who is sitting behind the lens. It’s the beauty of the images in Fisher’s book, and not just the amazing reality that they show us, that makes Bee special.

‘Bee’ will be available in stores April 28th. On April 27th the artist will have a book signing at Space 15 Twenty (1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90028) as part of MOPLA (Month of Photography Los Angeles).

In the meantime, we’ve got more images from Bee after the jump.

Beatrice 14x

Wing 30x

Wing base 550x

Drone’s wing 10x

-- Deborah Netburn

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An earlier version of this story had the address of Space 15 Twenty incorrect. It’s all better now.