In a world where just about everyone has a camera at their fingertips, photography is still not allowed in most courtrooms. That leaves the visual recording of such momentous events in the hands of the sketch artist.

How often have you seen these drawings on the evening news, depicting the events of the day from major trials? There are certain professions, especially within the arts, that most people don’t think about. The courtroom artist is one of those. DRAWN TESTIMONY will give the reader insight into and a new appreciation for a job that often falls just out of view.

"DRAWN TESTIMONY will give the reader insight into and a new appreciation for a job that often falls just out of view."

Jane Rosenberg has been at her craft for some 40 years. During that time, she has covered such huge names as Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Bernie Madoff, El Chapo, John Gotti and, most recently, Donald Trump. She also has been there for the trials of the Boston Marathon bomber and police officers in the George Floyd and Michael Stewart police brutality cases.

“A camera records a moment, but as an artist I can linger on it, using every tool of color, shadow and perspective to perform my duty of telling the story,” Rosenberg writes. Her work reminds me of what Ginger Rogers once said about dancing with Fred Astaire: “I did everything Fred did, only backwards and in high heels.” Rosenberg and her colleagues often have to deal with such obstacles as poor sight lines that can have a major impact in their compositions, as well as an extremely short window of opportunity to capture the subject. “My work involves spending a lot of time depicting a scene that unfolded and moved on within seconds.” That means working fast and, I would imagine, having a very good memory.

Courtroom artists are usually an invisible and anonymous presence, but once in a while they will make news themselves. One such instance is Rosenberg’s drawing of Tom Brady during the “Deflategate” hearings, in which the New England Patriots were accused of doctoring the footballs to their advantage. Her somewhat bizarre rendering of what many consider the greatest quarterback of all time became the stuff of internet memes and late-night talk show jokes. Rosenberg was thrust into the limelight, which is something she was not accustomed to nor was she particularly comfortable with.

There isn’t much in the way of personal background; Rosenberg doesn’t really go into detail about how she came to this specific niche. She writes with the same care she takes in her drawings, trying to express the emotions of the day from the viewpoints of the participants on the trial, their families, the spectators, the attorneys and, often, herself. One particularly intense incident came early on in her career when she had to draw a death-row inmate in the final moments of his life, strapped to an electric chair.

DRAWN TESTIMONY contains a number of Rosenberg’s sketches. The black-and-white images don’t convey the same depth as the color plates, but they still go a long way in fleshing out her stories.