ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the crucial role of handwork in historical practices of astronomical representation, focusing particularly on Anton Pannekoek’s Milky Way drawings. Using a range of cases, it explores how the acts of seeing, knowing, and drawing interacted to benefit observers, especially as a form of scientific labour. This functions as background for understanding the role of drawing and photography in Pannekoek’s graphical work. This paper activates the notion of handwork in relation to labour to make it historically relevant for astronomy’s representational practices, but also to connect these to broader political and epistemological trends. It will be shown that Pannekoek’s emphasis on manual labour acted as a bridge between photography and drawings, and more generally, as an important cross-over point between Pannekoek-the-socialist and Pannekoek-the-astronomer.
