An Artistic Portrait of Stephen Fry Made From His Own Bacteria

Stephen Fry is tak­ing part in a curi­ous sci­ence exper­i­ment. It involves cre­at­ing a por­trait of the writer/comedian/science enthu­si­ast, using noth­ing but his own bac­te­ria and cells. Accord­ing to the web site of The Big Bang UK Young Sci­en­tists & Engi­neers Fair, the “bac­te­ri­ographs” — as the por­traits are called — are “made from the sub­jects’ own cells – and have been grown by Zachary Copfer, an Amer­i­can micro­bi­ol­o­gist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er.” “To make the Pop Art style images, Zachary clev­er­ly expos­es areas of a petri dish to radi­a­tion in order to stim­u­late the bacteria’s growth. This cre­ates a pho­to­graph grown entire­ly from the bac­te­ria itself.” Find more of Copfer­’s work below, and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic work fea­tur­ing Stephen Fry fur­ther down the page.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Stephen Fry Hosts “The Sci­ence of Opera,” a Dis­cus­sion of How Music Moves Us Phys­i­cal­ly to Tears

Stephen Fry Explains Cloud Com­put­ing in a Short Ani­mat­ed Video

Stephen Fry Intro­duces the Strange New World of Nanoscience

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es