First Seeing a Virus

Living in the uncharted territory of the Sars-Cov2 era, I have looked to the scientific imagery of viruses to visualize and understand the situation. For me, the abstractness of the microscope photographs is similar to the maze-like feeling of living through the pandemic. I print the microscope images as cyanotypes to remind us that the timeline of the existence of vaccines and photography are about the same, both invented in the first half of the 19th Century. Imagine how mentally devastating an epidemic would be if we could not see what ailed us.