Breathtaking Medical Photography of Lennart Nilsson

19 weeks16 weeksA macrophage extends a pseudopod toward an already multiplying bacteria.The egg and the spermThe fallopian tubeLennart 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 (1965). His latest book, Life (2006), includes many of the stunning photographs from 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 on their journey through our solar system and out into the universe.His books are reasonably priced over at Amazon.com