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concept at an upcoming lecture. Gary Lees,
chairman of Johns Hopkins’ Department of
Art as Applied to Medicine (founded in 1911),
adds that illustrators work for pharmaceutical
companies, the National Science Foundation,
the Smithsonian, and various science journals
and magazines.
The role of the medical illustrator in a
hospital is multifaceted, though, and goes
far beyond creating captivating graphics for
lectures. “The illustrator has become a partner
in strategically communicating science,” says
Lees. An illustrator is often part of a surgical
team, documenting procedures as they occur
so that future surgeons can learn proper
technique. It’s critical that techniques be passed
on as accurately as possible: if details are left
out, or if surgeons don’t know exactly what to
expect when they make particular cuts or move
aside particular organs, the patient’s life could
be in danger. The goal, in fact, is for someone
to be able to follow along completely with the
illustrations, says Hines, just as if they were
following a recipe in a cookbook or following
the pictogram instructions in an airplane safety
pamphlet. “For surgeons,” says Hines, “knowing
the surgical field is important. They have to
have in their minds an anatomical roadmap of

what they’re going to see as they operate, before
the operation begins.”
But aside from surgery, is there truly a need
for science illustrators? Can’t they be replaced
by photographers? This is a question that
science illustrators encounter often. “When
you say what you do at a party,” says Jenny
Keller, a coordinator of and an instructor at
the California State University, Monterey Bay
science illustration program, “someone always
says ‘What’s that?’ And then, ‘why don’t you just
take a photograph?’” Keller usually responds
with a simple thought experiment: how would
you create a photograph of a cutaway of a
volcano? “Then people get it,” she says.
The volcano example is just one of many in
a class of images that cannot easily be created
using photography. Keller calls this class the
“Special View Category.” What if, say, you
wanted an image showing the parts of a plant
both above and below the ground, roots and
leaves and all? You could conceivably stage a
scene in which you put a transparent panel in
the ground next to a plant, but by the time you
positioned everything the way you wanted it
for your camera—lighting, soil distribution,
plant shape—you might as well have hired an

By Jenny Keller,
© Monterey Bay
Aquarium
Foundation
Comparison of
otter (left) and
human hair (right)
distirbution.

12

SciArt in America February 2014