Like a fair number of our readers, we’ll be on vacation for the first two weeks of August.  Travels include some time in Minnesota, where one becomes the subject of the mosquito’s gaze–surely an under-theorized facet of visual culture.  Thanks to the FEI Image Gallery, however, we can see the apparatus itself.

This electron microscope image is described as a frontal view of the compound eyes of a mosquito.  They actually don’t see very well, but that hardly matters as their antennae can sniff out your blood every time.  Perhaps the vacation can be used to think about incorporating other species and other senses into the study of visual culture.  Yeah, we’ll get right on that. . . . .

Posting will resume on August 17.