Levon Biss was looking at insects from his garden through an expensive microscope he bought for his son. For fun, they unintentionally placed an insect under the lens (镜头). "It is amazingly beautiful!" they both screamed.
The father had been making a career taking photos for ads. But that experience gave him a new direction. Around the world, insect populations are in decline because of habitat loss and climate change. Biss thought that if people could see what he saw through his son's microscope. they would care more about protecting insects.
So Biss turned to macrophotography: taking close-up pictures of small things, like flowers or insects. His work has attracted attention not just for its unusual beauty but also raises awareness about the need for conservation.
In 2016, Biss showed his first insect project, Microsculpture. The term refers to the features of an insect's exoskeleton (外骨骼), which develops over time as it adapts to its environment.
Biss's pictures exhibit the insects in all their microscopic details. Then he blows up the images until the insects become larger than life, some of them as tall as eight feet, namely nearly 2.5 meters. But each image takes weeks to make. He uses a digital camera with a microscope lens. The camera is fixed on a computerized track, which allows Biss to take a shot, then move the camera by seven microns—a distance equals to about 1/10 the thickness of a human hair—for the next shot. In the end, Biss might take 10,000 shots of an insect. A computer combines these small pictures into a single image.
Biss's latest exhibition is Extinct and Endangered at the American Museum of Natural History. He selected insects that were extinct or endangered, hoping his photos would serve as a better purpose. "I communicate visually," he says, "The way I work is through pictures. But I think it's my duty to shake things up and get people to pay attention."
