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The Beverages That Beguile Us, Through A Whole New Lens

Beer
William LeGoullon
Beer

What happens when you give an artist who is also a former bartender access to a camera mounted with a microscope? He takes pictures of drinks, of course.

That's exactly what Phoenix-based artist William "Bill" LeGoullon did in a series called Fingerprints of Drinkable Culture.

He set out to capture the relationship between science and the top five most-consumed beverages: beer, wine, cola, tea, and coffee.

But it didn't go as planned. At first, he tried to photograph the liquids while they were wet.

"It was difficult because of the way the camera and microscope work, you can't really focus on more than one little thing," he tells The Salt. "So I got frustrated and took it outside to let it dry. When it came back, it was a whole 'nother thing."

Wine
/ William LeGoullon
/
William LeGoullon
Wine

When the beverages dried on the slide, the imprints were more detailed and more beautiful than the liquids, he says. So they became the fingerprints series.

Cola
/ William LeGoullon
/
William LeGoullon
Cola

In honor of Memorial Day celebrations everywhere, enjoy these ultra close-ups from LeGoullon's collection. We guarantee you'll never look at beer, wine and cola the same way again.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

April Fulton is a former editor with NPR's Science Desk and a contributor to The Salt, NPR's Food Blog.