Haydn Shaughnessy gets a glimpse into an extraordinary, hidden microscopic world that most people never get to see
In the average year, approximately 100,000 images pass across the desk of Todd James, illustrations editor at National Geographic magazine. There's the additional burden of the 3,000 or more images most of us are exposed to each day as we pass from car or train to pavement and sofa. And then James might just like to read the magazines whose images he hasn't edited.
On top of his usual picture fest, though, James is about to sit down and judge one of the most unusual photographic competitions in the world, taking in more than 700 of the world's best "micro" photographs. And he's looking forward to it.
Nikon's Small World annual photomicrography competition honours artists who snap things we can't see. Here, beauty is in the lens of a powerful microscope and a digital camera that can tease out the shape of vitamins or the early life of a fish.
The Small World competition is now 31 years old. In addition to opening up the visual beauty of hidden micro-worlds, the competition forms part of a short but fascinating tradition, celebrating scientists' new perspectives on the physical world.
Digital photomicrography, as the photography of the microscopic world is known, has helped in the rapid evolution of biological science, the discipline that promises to deliver new and better cures to disease. Not only does photomicrography allow scientists to enter worlds they could not previously see, it also allows them to automate the process of archiving hundreds or thousands of images of cellular life and thereby to rapidly build a rich archival source of data on small worlds.
"One of the biggest advances," says Nikon executive Eric Flem, "is in the production of time-lapse movies of microscopic life, that is capturing images over time, and being able to view behaviour."
But what gets Todd James excited is the more gradual evolution of photomicrography to an art form.
"The quality of work has improved over the past five years," he says, "and speaking as a photo editor, I can say the calibre on an aesthetic level is certainly getting better. I see things that are just extraordinarily beautiful and it makes me want to learn about them."
That's his definition of a good photograph, the kind he seeks for the largest circulation photo magazine in the world. Among the hundreds of thousands of images he sees each year, one microscopic image stands out.
"It would have to be the picture of an ascorbic acid crystal," says Todd. "I was reminding myself recently of pictures over the past five years and that is one I particularly remember."
Earlier this year, Nikon made a new kind of breakthrough when they were asked to exhibit a range of Small World images at a fine arts conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The images are now a permanent part of the Vision project, an attempt to fuse art and science in the university curriculum.
WHILE NIKON'S COMPETITION has been on the go for three decades (each year's event is followed by an exhibition that tours the US) the tradition of microscopic discovery is approximately 270 years older, dating back to a Dutch haberdasher Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek.
Van Leeuwenhoek was the first human to magnify the world by 250 times or more and, according to a history of photomicrography published by the Washington-based Smithsonian Institute commemorating last year's 30th anniversary of the Small World competition, he holds the distinction of being one of the first people to view bacteria, sperm cells and red blood cells.
Everyday visual discoveries in the Small World portfolio include the Vitamin C crystals that made such an impression on James, tapeworm innards, the path of a water drip passing through a soap layer, pollen spores, fish larvae, differentiating neuronal cells.
In fact many of the images the mind has yet to imagine are now visible and reproducible.
Past prizewinners of Small World have included entries from Germany, Norway, Australia, Holland, France, Switzerland and Ireland (Dr Stephen Lowry at the University of Belfast). This year there are well over 750 entrants in the competition and there is significant Irish interest, though Nikon is not yet revealing either the number or quality of Irish entrants.
When the judging is complete later this month, Nikon will begin putting together its annual tour. Currently the exhibition goes on four simultaneous tours of the US, mainly to university science faculties and science museums, but a worthwhile innovation from this year's contest will be a European tour. Venues have yet to be decided, though Ireland will feature in the itinerary.
Eric Flem says that the contest is a way of giving something back to the scientific community that utilises Nikon equipment. But for Todd James the quality of entries has taken photomicrography beyond its origins in the laboratory.
"A lot depends on the technology but increasingly you see entries where there's a real appreciation of the aesthetically pleasing. You now see virtuosity. These guys are playing these cameras with the kind of virtuosity any artist might bring to the craft."
SMALL WORLDS IS one of a number of initiatives that bridge the gap between science and aesthetics, a growing area of interdisciplinary research and expression.
In the US, Art & Science Collaborations Inc and the multimedia chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, as well the Festival Della Scienza in Italy and an increasing number of universities are promoting the value of art to scientific endeavour and vice versa.
What then are we to make of the images from an aesthetic point of view? What is an appropriate emotional response to images of a world we previously could not see?
Flem calls these images a "window on what scientists see on their way to discovery". So on one level we are being asked to witness a snapshot of the scientific process. At another level, though, these pictures represent the opening of new worlds that are beyond everyday comprehension and which stretch us ethically.
Witnessing life on a microscopic scale has already challenged humans to restructure their ethical environments to take account of genetic discoveries, fertility procedures, and controversial stem cell technology. The more we understand, the greater the need to revise how we use what we know. For example, stem cell technology allows scientists to create human embryos and then extract cells that can be used therapeutically in the donor body. It is a giant step towards creating life outside the natural fertilisation process.
The Small World images, however, remain strangely detached from reality and emotions. It's possible to look at them without feeling a great deal beyond the initial awe their beauty engenders. As scientists become ever more adept at manipulating the world beyond our visual range, this emotional detachment is the real clue to its aesthetic value and its invisible challenge. We have to start caring about things we can't see. Arguably then, these images become an entree to the ethical challenges that lie ahead.