ABSTRACT
photography has acquired supremacy over painting or drawing. These last carry connotations of prestige that photography has never ousted or bettered but photography has verisimilitude and a kind of truth on its side that the hand-made object cannot match. It is also a more economical image-making process. The relation between drawings and their subjects, from the point of view of the artists and herbalists, must be seen as descriptions or explanations of and about plants, whereas from the point of view of the users of such books their adequacy would be entirely a function of the users’ expectations. The relationship between drawing and subject is closely akin to the relationship between theory and observation. Technical drawings form an integral and necessary part of industrial society. Without the conventions and skills of the draughtsman the complex machinery that forms part of our society simply could not exist. Using drawings instead of memorised routines the ‘perceptual span’ of the designer increased.
