Exploring the Beautiful, Fantastical Worlds of Pondlife
Sally Warring is the creative scientist behind the popular Instagram account Pondlife, which documents the fantastical unicellular microorganisms she discovers in wild bodies of water in and around New York City.
It’s tempting to call her images “otherworldly,” except, of course, that they portray the most common types of life on earth. The Atlantic Magazine calls her images “visually stunning.” We couldn’t agree more.
On her site, Sally writes:
“These organisms are intrinsically fascinating and often visually stunning; they are architects, builders, travellers, parasites, hunters, scavengers and prey; they have sex lives and mating rituals; they build communities and they go it alone. They are as complex in terms of behavior and lifestyle as any plant or animal, yet they do all of this within the confines of only one cell. Pondlife is an effort to document these organisms as the complex living creatures that they are, and make them accessible to as many people as possible.”
As part of Imagine Science Films “Symbiosis” competition, Sally was paired with filmmaker Sydney Clara Brafman. They made the chlorophyll-and-horror infused film “Symbiont.” We took the opportunity to inquire about Sally’s process and what’s next for her.
Tell us about your background in movie making? How did you start?
I’ve been making movies for about 18 months. Prior to that, I had never put my mind to photographing or recording anything outside of everyday photos and a few images I took for my research.
When I was an undergrad at the University of Melbourne I took many classes on microscopic organisms such as algae, protists and parasites. One of my professors, Jeremey Pickett-Heaps, made videos of microbes recorded through his microscope. I found them beautiful and fascinating.
I had a DVD of his work and I would watch them repeatedly. I would sometimes collect pond water and take it back to the lab and gaze in wonder at the microorganisms living within.
Many years later during my PhD, I was walking through the streets of New York chatting with a friend about microbes. I was telling him all the ways that they are beautiful and fascinating. He said, “sounds like it would make good TV.” I told him I thought so too! That I had always thought so and that I had loved watching videos of microbes in my undergrad days. He said, why don’t you make some TV? And that was the start of Pondlife.
A few days later I had realized that with my iPhone I could make my own videos. I live right by Prospect Park in Brooklyn and I quickly procured a fresh sample of pond water and was soon lost in its microcosmos.
Share some of your thoughts about the intersection of science and film.
I’m interested in life, in what we understand life to be, in how we characterize complex life, and how scientists present life to general audiences.
As a kid, I spent many hours watching natural history documentaries. When David Attenborough was on TV my whole family would sit down to watch. But never once did I see any content about microbial life and its role on our planet.
Microbial life makes up the vast majority of life’s diversity, yet outside of a select group of academics that study microbes, you wouldn’t even know it was there.
When I’m observing microbes, I’m constantly shocked and delighted with how well they can navigate their world. They build complex structures, hunt prey, form communities and collaborate with one and other. Yet they don’t have any arms or legs or eyes or a brain.
Microbes are also extremely important organisms. They make oxygen and degrade our waste and help us to digest our food. So we would do well to understand them. I think film and TV is a fantastic educational medium, and I would love to use it to communicate aspects of microbial biology, and the role of microbes in evolution and on our planet.
What’s next?
I want to make longer, narrated content about microbes. I want to tell stories about environmentally and medically important microbes. I want to show people the microbes that make up algal blooms and red tides and phosphorescent bays. I want to tell them about the microbes that live in our guts, and in the guts of termites, and show them the ones that can make them sick and the many more that will not.
