The black-and-white photographs of tears under a microscope in this delicate, intimate book, reveal distinct landscapes. One looks like water that’s just crystallized into the thinnest sheer of ice; another resembles a crowded harbor seen from above; and still another recalls a fern. Each image is accompanied by an evocative caption — “Resolution,’’ “Remorse,’’ “The pull between attachment and release’’ — and the experience is a little like watching clouds, seeing what the mind sees in the shapes. In “The Topography of Tears’’ (Bellevue) photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher shows us a place where language strains to express grief, longing, pride, frustration, joy, the confrontation with something beautiful, the confrontation with an onion.

NINA MACLAUGHLIN