“Malacologist Alan Solem”

I think it was over 10 years ago now, say 2014, that I was at the fair in Velp on King's Day. At one of the stalls, I saw a stack of yellow envelopes. Inside were mysterious photos: various black-and-white patterns, probably taken with a microscope. Naturally, I took the whole stack home with me.

More information is available on the backs of the photos. These were taken with an electron microscope at the Field Museum of Natural History. Dated 1973 and magnified to over 3,000 times. The subjects of the photos are mollusks, such as Steeriana celendinensis. A land snail from Peru. (source).

After some online research, it turns out that the researcher mentioned in the photo is almost certainly Alan Solem (June 21, 1931 – March 26, 1990) (source). He was an American biologist who studied mollusks. In one of his publications, I saw photos that resembled the photos from the fair.

The big question is how the photos, taken by someone from the United States, ended up at a street fair in Velp. I find the photos interesting both scientifically and aesthetically. They're beautiful patterns; maybe I can use them for double exposures someday. If you know more about these photos (for example, how they ended up in the Netherlands), please feel free to contact me.