Since the start of my micrograph project I have tried too crystallise a lot of OTC (over the counter) medicine. Some worked after a few minutes, and others needed weeks to form any crystals. And some… well… I have not got them to work yet. This is due the fact that making them visible (crystallise) with my primitive lab gear eliminated a bunch of them due not having the right tools. So my list of posable options got smaller and smaller since there are only so many interesting OTC medicine available.

Then one day I visited my sister and she asked me “what all those amazing photographs that I’m seeing on your Instagram account?” And once I explained her more about this micrograph project she was even more interested in the subject. Just before I wanted to leave she said something “weird” to me.

“Don’t forget the birth control pill”

Confused as I was about here sentence, she pointed towards the package of birth control pills she had laid out on the table for me to take home and examen under the microscope.

A new challenge

The next day I prepared my setup and made some primitive slides to see what would happen. And I was lucky after a few hours one of the slides showed some results! So I looked up the dilution of the slide and made with that same “recipe” some new slides. Now the only thing I could do was wait, and after 13 hours the whole drop was crystallised. I was amazed again by the creation.

Ethinylestradiol / levonorgestrel 0.03/0.15 crystals after waiting for 13 hours, made visible by using a cross polarized light microscope.

Ethinylestradiol / levonorgestrel 0.03/0.15 crystals after waiting for 13 hours, made visible by using a cross polarized light microscope. (100% zoom of above image)

The next step would now be too make allot of other medicine visual, and therefor reveal all there inner beauty, structures, colours & patterns within every micrograph.

With these Images I want to create awareness on the things we daily encounter and consume in our daily life.

In this case I'm trying to visualise medicine, to give the people using them a story starter to be able to tak more open about there medicine use or the disease that it is taken for. Maybe the birth control or a painkiller has not such a big story or impact but imagine visualising for example Management of HIV/AIDS medicine. Then you would visualise medicine that impacts millions of people every day. They would than be able to see what is probably there live safer in a very diffrent way, but you might also give them te opportunity to talk more open about there condition trough a work of art. This work of art can then be used as a starter to tell a personal story or the story of the condition itself or how to be able to prevent it.