Artist's Microscope Photographs Reveal Intricate Details of Pollen, Seeds, Fruit

There are entire, beautiful worlds hidden on the microscopic level, beneath the reach of our limited eyesight. With the invention of the microscope back in the late sixteenth century, these unseen dimensions suddenly came into focus, revealing some of the smallest and most detailed secrets of nature.

But microscopes don't have to be restricted to scientists only. Aiming to push the creative boundaries of this tool is British artist and art, design, and science professor Rob Kesseler, who uses scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to create vibrantly colored and intricate portraits of plant matter like pollen, seeds, and fruit.

Kesseler's work merges science and art, and is often done in collaboration with botanical scientists and molecular biologists around the world. In using a variety of complex microscopy processes to capture the details of his tiny subjects, Kesseler then brings these subjects to life by adding layers of subtle color. These can then printed out in larger formats to be exhibited—the imperceptible made visible.

As Kesseler explains in Nature, he first got into science via a present from his father, who was an engineer with a more scientific mind, and who knew his son loved observing the natural world around him:

"When I was ten my father gave me a microscope. It was a beautiful brass one—I still have it. When I had to choose between studying biology and art, I chose biology. Because my interest was natural history, I found biology completely alien. So I failed my exams. I switched to art and ended up studying ceramics, but most of my work has referenced natural history."

Later on, Kesseler wound up teaching ceramics, and received some funding to explore the links between ceramics and plant research. This opportunity ended up being the one that has defined his creative path ever since:

"I did some projects with micromorphology specialists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, exploring plants as inspiration for the applied and fine arts. With pollen expert Madeline Harley, I worked on a 2005 book featuring highly detailed microscope images of pollen. Wolfgang Stuppy, a Kew seed morphologist, approached me in 2006 to do one on seeds. We did another on fruit in 2008. On the back of that work, I was invited to be the 2009–10 artist-in-residence at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science in Lisbon."

To create these incredible micrographs (i.e. a photograph taken through a microscope) of plant matter, Kesseler first has to spray the specimens with platinum. This thin layer of metal helps the electrons being fired by the electron microscope to bounce off more smoothly, so that the finer details are more easily detected.

Each image is actually made up of many smaller images, which Kesseler then "stitches" together with software. The stitched image is carefully colorized to highlight its structure and composition.

While some of Kesseler's work focuses on intact plant components, other work, like this series done with a team of cellular and molecular scientists at the Instituto Ciencia Gulbenkian in Portugal, homes in on the cellular structures of Portuguese wild flora, including a number of rare orchids.

This series uses even higher-than-normal magnification, and utilizes micro-fine sections of stems that are stained to reveal their structures. Some of the images were painstakingly built from hundreds of individual micrographs, and the final large-format images can stretch almost 10 feet across. One can only imagine how impressive it is to be monumentally confronted with the complex beauty of something so small.

Kesseler's multidisciplinary work ultimately makes the connections between science and art clearer, and he has this to say about why it's important not to leave the art of observation only to scientists:

"When the camera and the microscope came together, control of the imaging was put in the hands of the scientist. One of the first botanical examples is a daguerreotype [an early type of photograph] of a section of clematis, by Andreas Ritter von Ettinghausen in 1840. Collaboration between artists and scientists withered; as the technology became more expensive and complex, fewer artists could get involved. Technology gradually became an unwitting gatekeeper to interdisciplinary collaboration. So observing has become a forgotten art. It is important to go for a walk and discover something in front of you that you haven't seen before."

To see more, visit Rob Kesseler.