A muddied family photograph sits on a hallway stairwell in an apartment block on March 17, 2011 in Kensennuma, Japan. Residents were allowed back to their homes today and began the massive cleanup operation caused by a 9.0 magnitude strong earthquake that struck on March 11 off the coast of north-eastern Japan. The quake triggered a tsunami wave of up to 10 metres which engulfed large parts of north-eastern Japan. The death toll has risen past 5000 with at least 8600 people still missing. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Firefighting teams try to extinguish an oil fire November 27, 2016 as smoke billows from one of the remaining oil wells set ablaze by ISIL in their retreat from Qayyarah at the start of the Mosul offensive which began more than a month prior. (Photo by Byron Smith/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A Shi'ite worshiper bleeds after cutting his scalp in a ritual display of mourning during an Ashura commemoration ceremony outside Kadhimiya shrine on December 6, 2011 in Baghdad, Iraq. Ashura marks the death of Prophet Muhammad's grandson the revered Imam Hussein in Karbala, Iraq in 680 AD. Shi'ite festivals were prohibited during the time of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein's rule. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

British soldiers inspect a captured German place in the Horseguards' Parade, London during World War I in November 1914, with the London Eye in the background as a reminder of just how much has changed in the last 100 years. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/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.

A woman stands in the middle of her fire damaged clothes after a massive fire at a market in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday March 20, 2017. The fire raged at the biggest central market in the center of the Capital. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)

An Islamic religious leader and rebel supporter (R) chant to rally rebel fighters awaiting a rumored Libyan Army advance April 11, 2011 between the crucial towns of Ajdabiyah and Brega, Libya. Rebels continued to hold the strategic town of Ajdabiyah a day after NATO air power struck army troops loyal to Libyan ruler Moammar Gaddafi nearby, helping the rebels secure the city. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)