Your name:
Alison Frohn
Social Media Details (Twitter, Instagram):
@xylofrohn (Instagram)
Select the category that best describes your image::
Micro images
Image title:
Under Pressure
Image description:
Sometimes you don't discover what you are truly made of when life is calm. Sometimes, life demands a response. In the same way the conjugating Zygnematales, such as these Spirogyra, cannot be reliably identified when they are simply growing vegetatively, some truths about ourselves remain invisible until conditions require transformative change. We like to imagine identity as something that can be observed at any moment, like a fixed trait under a microscope. But some of our most defining features emerge only during a particular process of becoming. Before that, the clues may be ambiguous; afterward, what was hidden is suddenly obvious. Not because the identity was created in that moment, but because the circumstances finally revealed what had been there all along. This sample was collected from a humble stormwater retention pond in Hudson Ohio, USA. This image was captured on an iPhone 13 mounted to an Olympus BX51 equipped with DIC.
