Can You Guess What These Photographs Are?

The next time you're swearing under your breath as you remove a dirty plate from your housemate’s room, we suggest you pause for thought, because you could be close to rinsing a piece of art under your kitchen tap.

No, we’ve not lost it, we’re simply under the fungal spell of artists Nikita Teryoshin and Max Slobodda who have been photographing mouldy microcosms growing on furry pasta pots, greasy pans and cheese graters and the result is as magical as it is nauseating.

Looking more like satellite shots of the world’s surface from outer space, Teryoshin and Slobodda’s conceptual series "Küchendienst" (German for “kitchen patrol”) grew much like the mould they capture: naturally from filth. They explained how they came to discover bacteria’s beguiling beauty to It's Nice That: “We were searching for a pot to make soup and found it on the balcony. It was blue, yellow and sweating. We were fascinated by the appearance and took some photographs. We decided to continue our documentation of things that once used to disgust us.” One man’s rubbish, eh?