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1. terra cibus no.5: table salt (45x Magnification)
2. terra cibus no.35: sun-dried tomato 3 (250x Magnification)
3. terra cibus no.32: shrimp tail (230x Magnification)
4. terra cibus no.24: Oreo (15x Magnification)

Terra Cibus ‘My Life with Science, Art and Food’ by Caren Alpert

What’s in our food? What’s the difference between a bird’s-eye view of a remote vegetable crop and a microscopic swath from a pineapple leaf? How distinct is a pile of table salt from miles and miles of icebergs?

I’ve made a living over the last decade capturing mostly recognizable images of food. Now I want to show what is there, but what we never actually see: landscapes, patterns and textures that ignite a completely different response from the viewer.

Photographs taken with electron microscopes have seized my interest because of their mystery and simultaneous familiarity. This medium deconstructs, abstracts, and reveals the ordinary in a riveting way. The closer the lens got, the more I saw food - and consumers of food - as part of a larger eco-system.

There’s so much rhetoric in our culture around food: food science, food journalism, food history, and food how-to. It is my hope that these photographs might transform our food obsession into a newfound closeness with what nourishes us.