We’ve all seen the weird spiky artist's impression images of a Virus, but these are just a visual guide, a helpful conceit. I've always been interested in trying to visualise that which we cannot actually view. We can't 'see' at this scale so we confabulate. We employ imagery that attempts to convey its structure but there are no real 'correct' representations of these objects. A virus is not a living thing. It is made up of nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) enclosed in a protein sheath. It's more like a chemistry set than an organism. Cryo-EM Tomography has shown us a version of it's 'true' form but it is still an artifice. At the scale they exist the analogue's or model’s we usually employ to give meaning to things are just not applicable. There is no direct correlation between what science can describe and what we as humans can visually and intuitively grasp.
So I have created my own. These are my viruses. Each is a kind of portrait of the sinister and unknown. The slickness of their surface and the contorted forms hint at the underlying contagion and threat. Why does it seem necessary for us to give a recognisable shape to this bundle of nucleic acids? Is it before we can contain our anxiety we must attach dimension to it? Craning our necks in the dark we strain to recognise the origin of a sound or an outline in the shadows. We seem to need to put a face to the danger. We have a powerful impulse to discern the hidden predator. I think humans need to visually contextualise things to just begin to cope with it. If something remains unknowable or hidden it is much more alarming.
Initial photography was done in the studio with strobes and LED backlighting. They were shot with the Fujifilm gfx100s with the Sigma 100mm f2.8 macro and the Fujinon 45mm-100mm f4. They were then heavily manipulated in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop to arrive at the kind of abstraction I was looking for.
