Algae Exposed

A unique collection of images of the world’s most important microorganism: algae. Algae perform photosynthesis and create oxygen in our atmosphere and without them we wouldn’t even have existed. In Algae Exposed they are captured by combining old optical instruments with modern digital techniques.

Using microscope techniques, Wim van Egmond has spent almost 30 years portraying microorganisms. People tend to know the algae by name, but have little to no knowledge of what they really are or look like. They can be as different from each other as plants and animals, but all of them share a common and very important quality, as they perform photosynthesis and create oxygen in our atmosphere. Without them we wouldn’t even have existed.

By combining old optical instruments with modern digital techniques, Wim van Egmond constructs special installations to capture microscopic organisms – often in a way that was not possible before. The final product can be perceived as an interplay of these self-developed techniques, artistic decisions and the micro organisms as protagonists – a process refined by the artist over many years.

In the installation films are projected from inside a sea container onto a transparent screen such that the spectators see a diptych with an endlessly changing combination of microscope images of moving algae.

The potential of tiny organisms captured in award-winning microscopic images.