Visual Culture Program

Abstract
In this lecture, Scott Chimileski will share his fascination with the wonders of the microbial world through vignettes and images from the book, Life at the Edge of Sight: A Photographic Exploration of the Microbial World (Harvard University Press), coauthored with Roberto Kolter. His presentation will feature a stunning visual exploration of microbes, from the pioneering findings of a seventeenth-century visionary to magnificent close-ups of the inner workings and cooperative communities of Earth's most prolific—but often invisible—organisms.

Bio
Scott Chimileski is a microbiologist, photographer and author based in the Kolter Lab at Harvard Medical School. Scott is a guest curator of the Microbial Life exhibition currently on view at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. He received a Passion in Science Award in Arts and Creativity from New England Biolabs in 2016 and the FASEB BioArt award in 2016 and 2017. Chimileski's images have been published in many popular outlets, including Time, Wired, The Atlantic, Stat, NPR, Scientific American, and Smithsonian magazine.

About the Visual Culture Program
Caltech's visual culture program, which is funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and based in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), features new undergraduate course offerings, guest lecturers, and other programming to foster conversations between humanists and scientists. Its activities are organized by HSS and other Caltech faculty in collaboration with scholars at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.