In a quiet frame of black and white, Ariel Waldman holds a vintage microscope with both hands, eyes lifted and thoughtful. There’s a stillness to the image, but also intent, as if she might peer through the lens and find something no one else has noticed.

I made this portrait in late 2024, at her studio in San Francisco. The space is a reflection of her mind: playful and precise, crowded with microscopes and strange specimens, science zines and handmade signs that say things like science around & find out. Penguins keep watch from shelves and corners. It’s the kind of place where ideas come to life before they’re fully formed.

Ariel is a filmmaker, explorer, writer, and advocate for science that includes everyone. Her work travels across disciplines, from citizen science to NASA advisory boards, from the deep field of Antarctica to the stage of a film festival. She has a knack for using every tool available: code, art, storytelling, humor, to make science radically accessible.

Her latest film, Antarctica Unearthed, might be the purest distillation of her approach yet. It’s a nature documentary, yes, but not in the traditional sense. Ariel filmed the entire project solo, without a crew, during a two-month research expedition with the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER team. She carried every piece of gear herself. Slept in a tent. Hauled cameras up icy ridges. Captured soundscapes in alien silence. The result is haunting and beautiful, a study not just of the coldest, driest desert on Earth, but of the intimacy that comes from observing it slowly, without spectacle. She doesn’t narrate over the images. She lets Antarctica speak.

Watching the film, I was reminded of the way she approaches everything: with patience, precision, and a quiet sense of mischief. Ariel doesn’t force wonder. She reveals it. She knows that science isn’t just about answers, it’s about participation, and possibility.

Whether she’s documenting microbes from melt ponds or explaining space missions on YouTube, there’s a throughline in her work: a belief that exploration is not the domain of the elite. It belongs to the curious.

Ariel is not content to interpret science for the public, she’s building new doors into it. She wants kids to feel welcome in the lab. She wants artists to look through microscopes. She wants space to feel close, not distant. And she’s doing it all from a studio filled with tiny tools, big questions, and the joyful clutter of a mind at work.