A boy attends the “Bloco da Lama” (Block of Mud) group during the carnival festivities, in Paraty, Brazil on February 11, 2024. (Photo by Pilar Olivares/Reuters)

The USA’s Beatriz Hatz competes at Women's Long Jump -T64 final at the Stade de France stadium, during the 2024 Paralympics, Saturday, August 31, 2024, in Paris, France. (Photo by Ümit Bektaş/Reuters)

Tautumeitas from Latvia performs the song “Bur Man Laimi” during the dress rehearsal for the second semi-final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest, in Basel, Switzerland, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (Photo by Martin Meissner/AP Photo)

The clown is on tour at Outlets on June 7, 2020 in Wuhan,Hubei Province,China.Wuhan has seen its urban life gradually get back to normal following encouragement from local city management to open up street-stalls. Since January, China has recorded more than 81,000 cases of COVID-19 and at least 3200 deaths, mostly in and around the city of Wuhan, in central Hubei province, where the outbreak first started. (Photo by Getty Images/Stringer)

Gemma Sadler models a fabulous Georgian costume, including a wig made from flowers and foliage created by Florist of the Year Helen James, during the staging day for the 2021 Harrogate Autumn Flower Show at Newby Hall, near Ripon, United Kingdom on Thursday, September 16, 2021. (Photo by Danny Lawson/PA Images via Getty Images)

Do tears of joy look the same as ones of woe—or ones from chopping onions? In “The Topography of Tears,” the Los Angeles-based photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher explores the physical terrain of one hundred tears emitted during a range of emotional states and physical reactions. Using a Zeiss microscope with an attached digital camera, she captures the composition of tears enclosed in glass slides, magnified between 10x and 40x. “There are many factors that determine the look of each tear image, including the viscosity of the tear, the chemistry of the weeper, the settings of the microscope, and the way I process the images afterwards,” she says.

Activists from the climate action group Ocean Rebellion perform a stunt outside the Science Museum, in London, United Kingdom on May 19, 2021. (Photo by Hannah McKay/Reuters)

A man in a wartime uniform, poses for a photo on an abandoned tank at a beach, ahead of the 60th anniversary of Second Taiwan Straits Crisis against China, in Kinmen, Taiwan on August 19, 2018. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)