Nearly a million people follow the Tardibabe Instagram page where Chloé Savard reveals an almost magical world invisible to the naked eye. His fascination with the infinitely small is also at the heart of a series of documentary capsules entitled Microscopic Creatures, broadcast by Savoir media.
We could say that Chloé Savard’s passion – and job – is to hunt micro-organisms like others go hunting for butterflies. That would be true, but it would not give the measure of the work she accomplishes for her Instagram page called Tardibabe (after the tardigrade, her favorite minibibitt), where she not only lists her finds, but where she magnifies them in such a way as to make almost irresistible a face moth invisible to the naked eye that lives… in our eyebrows.
Jean-René Dufort, who did a report on her for Infoman, summed up well what one can feel when looking at the images she shoots using an iPhone and her microscope: it’s meditative. And it is often astonishingly beautiful, given that the micro-organisms that it shows and tells about often have strange, and sometimes even uninviting, shapes…
She set up her Instagram page during her studies, with no other objective than to share her discoveries with her friends.
Observing the infinitely small gives him the impression of getting closer to an accessible world, more in any case than the distance that can only be seen through a telescope. “It’s easy to do: just get some soil from under your balcony [and put it under the eye of a microscope], she says. There is a treasure hunt aspect too. It’s like finding little aliens. »
His enthusiasm and know-how are now at the service of Microscopic Creatures, a documentary series in the form of capsules of approximately 11 minutes broadcast by Savoir media. The project is divided into eight episodes and as many themes which examine the micro-organisms found on or in human beings, on our domestic animals, in our house, in the Botanical Garden, in the street, etc.
This is among other reasons why she strives to make them “more beautiful than life” by using lenses, lights and colors that highlight them. She does everything she can to make people interested in it. His desire to share and educate also involves a hyper-relaxed tone and images freed from the serious framework of scientists in white coats in a laboratory.
“It would have been a shame if teenagers, pre-teens or people who aren’t into science didn’t understand the point,” she says. We wanted people of all ages to be interested in it. My Instagram page is like that too: I try to reach everyone. I wanted the series to keep that energy. »
Tardibabe is one of the most popular microscopy pages on Instagram, argues Chloé Savard, who is very proud of this accomplishment and also of being one of these female scientists who can also inspire young girls. “I’m really happy to represent women in science – queer women at that,” she says. It adds something even greater. »