“We will employ the best engravers for the figures” – Draughtsmen and Engravers of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1700–1809. – Although barely mentioned in accounts of its history of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, draughtsmen and engravers were, from the very inception, essential collaborators. Based on previously overlooked archival sources, this paper investigates the strategies that scientists used to select the most appropriate candidates during the first hundred years of the academy's existence. These included: the engaging of artists already (...) known to the scientists or those who had been recommendaded to them; maintaining long-term relationships with a number of artists, and later with their offspring ; in 1768 this strategy culminated in the creation of a permanent position for one academic draughtsman; and hiring draughtsmen who specialised in the subject matter in question, which entailed, for example, employing different people to carry out anatomical and botanical illustrations. (shrink)

Photography – a novel medium of scientific representation in the XIXth century array of arts and sciences. To delve into various nineteenth century academic disciplines under the heading ‘photography in the arts and sciences’ as did last year's annual conference of the History of Science Society – the interest in such a topic only partly stems from the ‘iconic turn’ that has generally enlarged the scope of the social sciences in recent years. A more poignant feature in any such present (...) day study will probably be a basic scepticism facing the fact that in public use photographs have been manipulated in many respects.Yet, while shying away from any simple success story, a historically minded approach to changing ‘visual paradigms’ has begun to emerge. In this context, it has proved of considerable heuristic value to reconsider the role of early photography in an array of science, arts and technology: Since the reliance on the traditional ways of sketching reality persisted, in many an instance where photography was introduced, the thoughts the pioneer photographers had about their new, seemingly automated business, call for close attention. Thus scholarship sets up a parallel ‘discussion room’; the lively debate on the benefit of academic drawings as opposed to photographic portraits is a case in point.Some fairly specialised reports on photographically based analyses, such as electron microscopy, point to a borderline where the very idea of representation as a correspondence of reality and imagination gets blurred. Even though any ‘visual culture’ will have to shoulder the ‘burden of representation’, it is equally likely that it will offer a deeper sensibility for the intricacies entailed in the variegated ways of illustrating or mapping chosen subjects of scientific interest. Scholarship may thus somewhat control the disillusionment that by now has become the epitome of writing on photographic history. Provided with a renewed methodological awareness for the perception process and its photographic transition, historians may strike a better balance between the ever present tendencies of a realistic and an aesthetic way of picturing the world we live in. (shrink)

ArgumentDrawing and writing number among the most widespread scientific practices of representation. Neither photography, graphic recording apparatuses, typewriters, nor digital word- and image-processing ever completely replaced drawing and writing by hand. The interaction of hand, paper, and pen indeed involves much more than simply recording or visualizing what was previously thought, observed, or imagined. Both writing and drawing have the power to translate concepts and observations into two-dimensional, manageable, reproducible objects. They help to develop research questions and they open up (...) an interaction between the gathering of phenomena and the formation of theses. Related to the manifold studies of representational activities in the sciences and the humanities, this topical issue tries to refine our understanding of the capacities of drawing and writing as research techniques; i.e. as productive epistemic practices. In particular the contributions address three aspects: the material conditions and configurations of the “scene of drawing and writing,” the involved procedures of production, and the languages of inscription. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn dem Beitrag wird die These vertreten, dass die für Deutschland typische „biologische Perspektive“ (Lynn Nyhart) mit ihrem Interesse am lebenden Tier nicht nur die naturkundliche Praxis während der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts in vielfältiger Weise beeinflusste, sondern auch die Illustrationen der populären Zoologie, wie etwa in Brehms Thierleben, prägte: Die Zeichner bevorzugten als Modelle nun lebende Tiere, die sie in den zoologischen Gärten studierten; dabei stellten sie diese häufig in ihrer natürlichen Umgebung dar, die sie aus Mangel an (...) eigener Kenntnis aber imaginieren mussten. Ein weiteres beliebtes Genre in der populären Zoologie waren die Darstellungen von kämpfenden Tieren, die nicht zuletzt durch ihre Dramatik ins Auge fielen. Die ersten Tierfotografen orientierten sich an diesen Merkmalen der zoologischen Illustrationen und gaben ihren Aufnahmen mit Hilfe von Manipulationen, Inszenierungen und Retuschen den Eindruck von natürlicher Umgebung und Dramatik. Dennoch betonten sowohl Zeichner als auch Fotografen die Naturtreue und – darauf beruhend – den wissenschaftlichen Wert ihrer Abbildungen. Sie prägten damit eine „biologische“ Tierfotografie, die es nach der Jahrhundertwende engagierten Amateuren ermöglichte ein populäres Werk der heimischen Tierwelt zu schaffen, das breite Anerkennung fand. (shrink)

An Analytical Visualization Practice. The Pathological‐anatomical Illustrations of Jean Cruveilhier in Relation to Clinical Observations. The article examines the meaning and function of medical illustrations in the famous Atlas Anatomie pathologique, published by the French surgeon Jean Cruveilhier (1791–1874). By tracing the complex representation of pathological entities both back to the visual tradition of anatomy and the semiotic tradition of case descriptions and case histories, the article identifies the visualization technique of Cruveilhier as an analytical practice. The illustration of pathological (...) anatomy gains a functional diagnostic quality when bound to case descriptions and clinical histories. The Atlas serves thereby as a sample to trace the genealogies of a clinical visualization practice in characteristic images that is both engaged with an individual case and classificational tasks. (shrink)