Rose-Lynn Fisher's The Topography of Tears is an examination of human tears through an optical microscope. During a period of loss, sorrow and change, Fisher began to wonder about the physical nature of her tears, what they looked like, and whether tears of grief, joy or laughter had differing characteristics.

She found that her photographs, taken through a microscope, revealed "how the patterning of nature seems so consistent, regardless of scale." The images actually evoked a sense of place. Fisher observed that they are "like aerial views of emotional terrain.

Though the empirical nature of tears is a composition of water, proteins, minerals, hormones and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape...like an ephemeral atlas."