These 'microbial selfies' show how we all have wildly different germs, fungi and yeast growing on our hands

In June 2022, Joel Penner and I came up with a unique project for the premiere of our film Wrought. 

We'd take microbial selfies of people in the audience.

To do this, we prepared over 100 plastic dinner plates with a mixture of agar (the seaweed-based gel used in petri dishes), powdered broth (for nutrients) and charcoal powder (for colour contrast as the microbes developed).

At the premiere, we set up a microbial-selfie booth where our guests pressed their palms onto the plates, labelled with their names. Then Joel took the plates home and allowed the bacteria, fungi and yeast to grow in a humid environment (which they love).

After several days, when the growth was visible, he took high-resolution photos of the handprints. The result is a unique snapshot of each person's microbiome. 

Many artists have drawn an analogy between the way a photographic image is produced and the way bacteria grow on a dish. 

Leila Nadir and Cary Adams rigged up cameras with sensors to measure the shifting pH levels, oxygen and colour values of the fermentation process, allowing the microbes to take their own selfies.  

Meanwhile, artist and biologist François-Joseph Lapointe has captured stunning high-res images of the microscopic microbes found on his body. And bioartist Ani Liu has created bacterial self-portraits of her own swabbed skin — similar to our microbial selfies. 

Wrought is a short time-lapse documentary, which explores the human side of rot, fermentation and decay. Watch it now on CBC Gem.