As part of the series Nanocosmos, this selection highlights the composite photographs by Michael Benson, exploring the corporeality of the real world that is hidden from the human eye. Nanocosmos is a collection of images bridging visual spectacle and scientific divulgence, a captivating intersection of architecture, botany, biology, and contemporary art.
Artist and author Michael Benson investigates sublime topographies at tiny scales by utilising the scanning electron microscope (SEM) at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Canada. The SEM apparatus allows Benson to examine exceedingly small single-celled organisms. These include the study of radiolarians and diatoms; flowering plants from tropical and temperate regions; and insects and other organisms.
The SEM deploys electrons instead of visible light to scan the specimen. This results in a more precise and greater resolution in an image because electron wave lengths are 100,000 times smaller than visible light photons. The energy levels produced by SEM are one thousand times greater than visible light. This generates accelerated electron beams acting as a light source to detect exact details in the specimen with an unnatural precision. The scanned raw image data are then processed and constructed together to visualise the artistic construction of the smallest living organisms.
Radiolaria are studies of complex silica skeletons which drift through the oceans and are smaller than specks of dust. These somewhat futuristic spiked polyhedral forms descend down to the seabed when the single-celled protozoa living inside dies, leaving geological layers of complex mineral glasswork from previous time periods.
We’re used to considering the universe of planets, stars and galaxies as humbling in their beautify and immensity, but we don’t frequently consider that other cosmos at the other end of the size-scale, let alone perceive it as awe-inspiring in its own right, Benson says. This work tries to correct that oversight.
About Michael Benson
Michael Benson (b 1962) focuses on the intersection of art and science. An artist, writer and filmmaker currently based in Canada, Benson has staged a series of large-scale shows of planetary landscape photography in the US and internationally. Benson's recent work of composite photographs explores the corporeality of the real world that is hidden from the human eye.
A major museum show, Otherworlds: Visions of Our Solar System, at London’s Natural History Museum took place in 2016, featuring new music composed by Brian Eno, and travelled to the Vienna and Luxembourg Natural History Museums. A 7-room, 150-print retrospective, Beyond, was staged from 2010-2011 at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
Benson used a scanning electron microscope at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC and the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa to focus on natural design at sub-millimeter scales for Nanocosmos. He was a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities and a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Media Lab.
Benson's book Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time, (2014) received front-page coverage in The New York Times and was a finalist for the Science and Technology award at the 2015 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Benson has contributed to many magazines and newspapers, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and Rolling Stone. Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece was published in 2018.
Michael Benson is also an award-winning filmmaker, with work that straddles the line between fiction and documentary film practice. In 2008-10, Benson worked with director Terrence Malick to help produce space and cosmology sequences for Malick's film Tree of Life, which drew in part from Benson's book and exhibition projects. The film won the Palm d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.