The article mentions that illustration is a lot better than photography but doesn't mention any specifics. Does anyone have insight as to why this is?
Painting is not copying. Painting is seeing and then making marks on the page that will make others see.
It is editorial in a way photography isn’t.
Photographs are inherently multiple; a single print might be all that exists, but the artist is at least able to make more.
Comparing photographs and prints, Picasso's "La Femme Qui Pleure I" sold for $5.1M[0], while the most paid for a photograph appears to be $4.3M, for Rhein II by Andreas Gursky[1].
I conclude from this that it's the singularity of paintings, rather than their editorial and subjective quality, that is responsible for the difference in price.
[0]: https://www.christies.com/features/saleroom-picasso-la-femme...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_photogr...
I think it’s more a matter of ‘snobbiness’ that determines prices that get paid.
The illustrator is able to draw the defining characteristics of the plant/subject and leave out what is not important. Things like veins or leaf structure to define the genus are incredibly important.
The editorial nature can bring that forward. With a picture, it is hard for a lay person to tell what details are classifying/important.
Photography is just not enough. Botanical illustration puts all required details, and only those, together in the same place.
1-Can show all the plants in the same family in the same figure.
2-Can link features that never appear at the same time (like winter buds, fall fruits, summer flowers and associated fauna and funghia),
3-Can play with the scale showing features of much different sizes at similar scale (i.e tricolpate pollen, the shape of the aperture in anthers, and silhouette of the whole tree).
4-Will show the required details, but not more. A photo will show five plants mixed in the same picture so is often very confuse for an untrained eye to understand "what" is from "who". Photos lead often to "frankenplants" and it takes a lot of experience to disclose it, and this is a problem [1].
5-Will be uniform in design. Not distracting light or cropped leaves in photos. Not backgrounds that vary among figures.
6-Will take care of correct hues and color variations. Cheap caperas distroy red hues for example. Subtle variations are notoriously difficult to reproduce. Colors will be oversaturated and will change a lot when taken in different hours of the day. Similar species will appear darker and its mimic will appear lighter. In the end you have a very confuse picture.
[1] This can seem just pedantry until you realize that your children are looking at a photo showing the fruits of an edible species, tagged as "delicious as raw berries and green parts can be used in salads" but mixed with leaves of a second species growing in the background that is poisonous (and there is not a single warn about it at sight). Internet is full of those mistakes.
"The development of photographic plates has not made illustration obsolete, despite the improvements in reproducing photographs in printed materials. A botanical illustrator is able to create a compromise of accuracy, an idealized image from several specimens, and the inclusion of the face and reverse of the features such as leaves. Additionally, details of sections can be given at a magnified scale and included around the margins around the image."
This is a real advantage of illustration, assuming the illustrator has put in their research.
> and the inclusion of the face and reverse of the features such as leaves. Additionally, details of sections can be given at a magnified scale and included around the margins around the image.
This is spurious; photos of the face and reverse of a leaf are no different from illustrations of the face and reverse of a leaf in terms of what it's possible to include in an image, and obviously the same goes for marginalia. You can composite multiple photos on one page just as easily as you can draw multiple things on one page.
The most obvious example that comes to mind for botanical illustration is the use of cross sections to display the various structures and mechanisms of a plant in a way that is readily interpretable.
And contrast idiot savants who are able to draw images perfectly, while no one believes they need to understand how whatever they're drawing works.
A photo will accurately show a specific plant. A botanical illustration can show the archetypical plant.