As a text Envisioning Science strives to communicate on multiple levels. Most overt among these is its agenda as a “how-to” book. Its clearly articulated organizational protocol puts you through the modern (science) photographer’s paces—from the basics of composing the frame and setting an f-stop to the specifics of lighting a sample on a microscope stage and using digital enhancement. Rather than giving dry instructions in the manner of a technical handbook, however, Frankel explains with example photographs. This is at once one of the most and least successful aspects of the book. On the one hand, when she shows side-by-sides of computer memory, one lit with transmitted and the other with reflected light, more is communicated than any step-by-step instructions could convey; on the other, at times one wishes she would be a bit more explicit. For example: exactly what f-stop, shutter-speed, lighting, and film did she use to get that shot of magnetite in a black oil suspension? More trying is the pedantic tone that accompanies some of the photos where, as in an overly didactic children’s book, she asks you to identify the difference between two similar photographs or to “guess” what she used as background material.

These small complaints are not intended to discourage the potential buyer or user of Frankel’s book. And, despite the risk that I might contradict myself, Envisioning Science is in many ways not a “how-to” manual at all, but rather what I could call an encouragement—cheerfully prodding scientists to do what they do best—experiment: in this case, to experiment with photography in the context of science and science in the context of photography. For me this is what is most philosophically interesting about the book: its plain attention to the intersection of aesthetics and science. Both explicitly and implicitly this book asks what the purpose is of the scientific image. In encouraging scientists to make images of their work that are interesting and engaging, where samples are created specifically for the taking of photographs, Frankel brings to the fore the visual materiality of science. While many scientists acknowledge that their work has an aesthetic component, Envisioning Science seeks to motivate us to better understand our science by orienting our work toward the creation of explicitly aesthetic images. Thus, Frankel urges us to shift the representations of our data, samples, and instrumentation into artistic renderings that make the viewer “stay” with the photograph. From my perspective she makes this case most compellingly with images that capture the temporality of scientific phenomena. In particular I found myself wanting to linger over those that use stop-action photographic techniques to generate frame-by-frame images of ephemeral structures.

A more subtle aspect of Frankel’s agenda is how doing science for the sake of an aesthetic image influences the science itself. Does this orientation give us another way of seeing? A type of seeing where we are simultaneously observer and participant in our own work? Frankel speaks directly to this when she writes that preparing a scientific sample for a photograph can help to determine “which components (of your sample) are essential elements of the experiment and perhaps ultimately clarify your thinking about the science” (p 82). Frankel’s own attempts to photographically capture “the Maragoni effect on the sides of a wine glass,” is an apt example of this, where after much trial and error she determined that the “best rendition of the phenomena was produced by simply photographing the shadow alone” (p 108). Unfortunately, she does not make her case as strongly for many of the photographs in the book. Leaning more toward producing visually compelling images, her brief descriptions tend to slight the science underlying the photographs. As a result I was at times left wondering what scientific information a particular image was meant to convey. In an indirect way Frankel addresses this scarcity of scientifically illuminating information by providing literature references for most of the images in the “visual index” at the end of the book. So, if you really want to know, you too can find out how the beautiful blue image on p 137 informs the study of “viscous electrified jets.”

On one last small note I want to comment on Frankel’s organizational strategy for the book, which I found to be quite shrewd. Beginning in the macroscale realm of yeast colonies and ending with images of the very tiny universe of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Frankel mirrors the world of the molecular scientist. Ever focused inward, chemists see water molecules where others see rivers. In this I found her section “Losing More Control” particularly apropos to the chemist’s dilemma; that is, as we try to capture smaller and smaller objects with more and more sophisticated instrumentation the atoms in the mind’s eye become less focused, and shift into the intangible mathematical world of quantum mechanics. But perhaps I wax too philosophical. On a more practical level I was contemplating giving Envisioning Science to my gadget-loving colleague since he might really use it, but on second thought I think I’ll keep it for my coffee table; he can buy his own.