Breathtaking Medical Photography of Lennart Nilsson
19 weeks
16 weeks
A macrophage extends a pseudopod toward an already multiplying bacteria.
The egg and the sperm
The fallopian tube
Lennart Nilsson, Swedish photographer and scientist, started his career as a photojournalist in the mid-1940s photographing prominent actors, politicians, and royal family as they went about their daily lives. Life as a photojournalist, however, was a stark contrast to capturing the intricate beauty of the human body, which is what Nilsson is so well known for today.
Nilsson always had an interest in the microscopic world. At 15 he saw a film at school about Louis Pasteur. While most students would be dosing off, the film sparked a lifelong interest in the young Nilsson.
In the mid-1950s, he began experimenting with new techniques allowing him to produce extreme close-up photographs. New advances in endoscopes in the mid-1960s allowed Nilsson to combine his photographic techniques to create unparalleled photographs of inside the human body.
By 1965 his groundbreaking photographs of the miracle of birth became internationally known when they appeared on the front cover and on 16 pages in Life Magazine.
These photographs and many more were published in his most famous book, A Child Is Born
It’s incredible that some of these images were produced more than 40 years ago before 3D illustration and animation. Nilsson’s photography of the inner human landscape is absolutely vivid, crisp, and clear. And his compositions, absolutely elegant.
Among the great achievements of Nilsson—capturing the first images of HIV and the SARS virus. His photographs have even traveled through space,
NASA’s unmanned spacecraft Voyager I and Voyager II both carried photographs from a A Child Is Born
His books are reasonably priced over at Amazon.com
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Unfortunately his beautiful photographs opened the door to the the anti-abortion crowd by redefining fetus to baby.
Just incredible Photgraphs, a shame peopel have to argue about what they are and what they are not
“Unfortunately his beautiful photographs opened the door to the the anti-abortion crowd by redefining fetus to baby”.
On the contrary, “fetus” is a term used as part of the politics of abortion. Nilsson’s photographs show development as being undoubtedly and obviously human at earlier and earlier time. They show the “fetus” is a baby.
David said:
“Unfortunately his beautiful photographs opened the door to the the anti-abortion crowd by redefining fetus to baby.”
David, isn’t it “unfortunate” when the truth comes out and it doesn’t match our beliefs? If it’s obviously a “baby”, then call it a “baby”. How is it possible to look at these photos and say “abortion is okay”?
Wow- life is amazing- praise the God
A fetus is not an embryo, which is the thing that is actually aborted. If they aborted a fetus, that would be completely illegal, since all of the major organ systems have formed after the first 8 weeks. You cant abort a fetus. Embryos are not thinking, feeling humans, yet, they are more like parasites, as they cannot live without the aid of a host to feed off of.
All his famous “baby” pictures (Spaceman baby, etc.) were of aborted fetuses, allowing him to position and light them properly, including placing the thumb of the fetus in its mouth for his most famous photograph.
FYI