Americans purchase more than 25 billion doses of acetaminophen each year. Most people pop those pills into their mouth without a second thought. To you, they're just pills. But to Peter Juzak, they're gorgeous, abstract works of art.
Granted, you need a microscope to see acetaminophen like Juzak sees it after smashing tablets to bits. “I’m intrigued by the endless variety of colors and shapes,” he says. “To me, it’s like traveling through the infinity of space."
The German photographer works in publishing in Hanover. He developed a fascination with microscope photography after reading a book on the topic in 1979 and borrowing a microscope from a pharmacist friend. Juzak has since photographed more than 40 substances, from vitamin C to benzoic acid.
He started shooting acetaminophen four years ago. He grinds each tablet and pours the powder on a slide, which he heats on a hotplate to melt so the acetaminophen crystalizes. It can take anywhere from a few hours to sometimes a week or more. When they finally appear, Juzak places the slide in a Jenalab polarizing microscope fitted with a Sony Alpha 7 camera, and illuminates it from the side with a speedlight.
A single slide can yield hundreds of images, each exploding with phantasmic colors in shapes that resemble splintered glass. Juzak says the pictures stimulate his imagination and open his mind. After seeing his remarkable series Paracetamol, you'll never look at Tylenol the same way again.
