Since its inception, photography has been both a tool and a subject of research. As developments in photochemistry and camera construction made it an increasingly popular mass medium, it also served as an important means of scientific documentation, education, and communication. Science in Sight documents both kinds of scientific photography with pictures from the vast image archive at the ETH-Bibliothek, the main library at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zürich.

Monika Burri has selected a rich array of images, including astronomical and microphotography, laboratory situations, carefully illuminated experimental installations, and more. In her introductory essay, she investigates the intersection of photography and science as well as the changing role of ETH Zürich’s Photographic Institute. (The institute, whose little-examined archive supplies many of this volume’s previously unpublished images, served ETH Zürich as an independent service and research unit from 1886 until 1979.)

The third volume in Verlag Scheidegger and Spiess’s Pictorial Worlds series, Science in Sight will appeal to anyone interested in the history of photography.