Essential to the life cycle of flowers and the agricultural systems that sustain human life, the humble bee is at once mighty and fragile. Anne Noble captures these contrasting qualities in her Dead Bee Portraits, which recall dust-covered artefacts from another time.

Noble used microscopic photography to create her ghostly monochromatic images, in which even the finest hair on the insect’s body is delineated. To be visible to the electronic beam, the bees were dusted in gold, revealing battered wings and antennae under the enormous magnification.

In Dead Bee Portraits, Noble raises awareness of an insect universally revered in myth, religion, literature and science whose existence is today threatened by pests, chemicals, disease and the effects of climate change.