Clarity or accuracy – what makes a good scientific image?

Summary

Flashes of Brilliance: The Genius of Early Photography and How It Transformed Art, Science, and History Anika Burgess W. W. Norton (2025)As someone who has spent a career visualizing science, Flashes of Brilliance felt like reading a love letter to the power of the photographic image. This beautifully written book, by writer and photo editor Anika Burgess, is a thoughtful, personal and witty meditation on how imagery does much more than just document a scene.Will AI jeopardize science photography? There’s still time to create an ethical code of conductAlong with fascinating examples of early efforts to capture images of society, the book captures well the dual role of the scientific image — as both a tool for discovery and a medium of communication. A reader begins to understand that photography in general, and especially in science, is not just illustrative, it is investigative. And sometimes, as Burgess clearly describes, it is revelatory.Through a series of compelling stories and visual examples, the author reminds us that an image can crystallize a complex idea in a way that no string of words ever can. It’s a celebration of ‘aha’ moments made visible. Those photographs wake us up to social issues and phenomena we never even knew existed.Jacob Riis’ images of the squalid conditions of people living in tenements in New York City’s Lower East Side around 1889 say so much more than any text describing the situation. By using flash powder to add light to the exposure, he could reveal details of these ordinarily gloomy spaces and those inhabiting them.Jacob Riis captured the poor conditions of people living in New York City around 1900, such as these children sleeping on a steam grate for warmth.Credit: Granger/Historical Picture Archive/AlamyManipulating realityBurgess doesn’t shy away from the challenges, either — acknowledging how easily images can mislead or manipulate. Even from the beginning, some photographers used a technique to combine negatives in the print...