Photographs as early scientific book illustrations

Abstract

Before the invention of photography, a variety of methods was already available for the illustration of printed material. Woodcuts, lithographs, wood and steel engravings permitted authors, publishers, printers and artists to translate their pictorial ideas into practice. However, all these methods depended on the action of the human hand which guided the knife, the lithographic crayon or the engraving tool. As long as artists used these instruments as part of an original creation, all was well, but when the task was to transfer an existing work of art into print, the work of the engraver was, at best, an act of interference by a second artist. In the course of these ‘translations’, the original information could never be precisely transmitted, and the aura surrounding the original work of art was lost. These facts were viewed with pain and regret, but could not be immediately altered.

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