These portraits of microbes were inspired by the images in two microbiology textbooks I edited. It seems only right that these tiny, utterly amazing beings that are everywhere in our lives (there are ten times more bacteria cells in and on our bodies than there are human cells, for example) should be celebrated with their own portraits. I chose to do these in a medium as common and domestic as these creatures: embroidery.

Penicillium

Herpes simplex virus

Emiliania huxleyi, a coccolithophore

Rickettsia: the cause of typhus