Everyone wants to know what's in their food these days. How much sugar is in this soda? What's the fat content of that burger? Is that milk organic? But when it comes to pills, most of people throw 'em back without a thought, unaware of what's inside and what it might be made of.
Not photographer Maurice Mikkers. He's well aware of what's inside a wide variety of drugs, from aspirin to ecstasy. He's been peering inside pills for about two years, making stunning images of all the things that heal you, soothe you, or send you on a wild, psychedelic ride.
His series Micrograph Stories started with the over-the-counter painkillers he took for three months after a surgery. The Dutch photographer had lab experience and bought a microscope so he could identify and photograph everything he was sending down his gullet. "We often use products without hesitation. Who these days is actually reading every medication leaflet or product label?" he says.
His rig in The Hague includes a trinocular microscope, which features two lenses to peer through and a third for the camera. Mikkers shoots with a Canon 5D Mark III and takes a series of HDR detail images through the microscope that he stitches together in Photoshop. He crushes pills in a mortar, weights out a specific amount and dissolves it in water. Drops of the solution are placed on slides, then allowed to crystalize. He'll make solutions of different strengths to see which words best, and can wait anywhere from minutes to weeks for them to dry.
His first big success came with diclofenac (used to treat everything from migraines to menstrual cramps to arthritis pain). The solution took 72-hours to dry and created a beautiful crystal with a colorful outer section surrounding a geometric black and white center. Mikkers moved on from painkillers to everything from birth control pills to antibiotics and caffeine, but his most engrossing photos come from illegal drugs. MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, for example, is wildly colorful inside. “I had seen a lot of crystallization processes happening under the microscope in the last year and this was with no doubt one of the most vivid, intense and mind-blowing results I had encountered,” he says.
The photographer has gone on to peer inside LSD, GHB, DMT, and 2CB. He’s also photographed cocaine, ketamine and oxycodone, but those didn’t produce the crystalline formations he wanted (he’s still trying). Some of the drugs he purchased using Bitcoin. While the Netherlands is fairly tolerant of drugs in low quantities, Mikkers does have some hesitation using the Deep Web. But the results are too good to quit. "Stopping was not an option anymore," he says. "I got 'addicted' and obsessed with documenting crystalline formations of drugs."
There’s much more to explore. He’s investigating ingredients that shape and manipulate what we eat. One of his most eye-popping images is of potassium bitartrate, which is used to do everything from stabilize whipped cream to reduce the discoloration of boiled vegetables. It's a visual reminder of the chemicals people ingest on a daily basis. Mikkers says his ultimate goal is education. "Some of us are very involved and aware about our product use, others don’t care about what’s actually inside until things may go wrong," he says. "Involved or not the things inside are often abracadabra to us."
