ArtistSwedish
Lennart Nilsson
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On April 30, 1965, the switchboards at Life magazine were overwhelmed. The issue had sold out eight million copies in four days. The reason was sixteen pages of photographs showing human embryos and fetuses in the womb - images so technically improbable that many readers assumed they were paintings. The photographer was Lennart Nilsson, born in Strängnäs on August 24, 1922, and the pictures would go on to appear in one of the best-selling illustrated books ever printed.
Nilsson came to medical photography through photojournalism. He was among Sweden's first modern photojournalists, publishing essays on a Lapland midwife (1945), a polar bear hunt off the coast of Svalbard (1947), and a journey through Congo (1948) in international titles including Life, Picture Post and Illustrated. Sweden in Profile (1954) brought further attention. But it was the interior of the human body, not the exterior world, that would define his legacy.
To photograph embryos in utero, Nilsson spent years collaborating with surgeons and engineers, adapting endoscopic technology and developing custom macro lenses and lighting rigs. The result was 'Ett barn blir till' (A Child Is Born), published simultaneously in 1965 in multiple countries and eventually translated into more than twenty languages in five editions. Photographs from the book were later selected for inclusion on both Voyager spacecraft as examples of human life.
The scope of Nilsson's scientific partnerships expanded throughout subsequent decades. He documented the human immune system, the structure of viruses including the HIV virus, and the stages of the female reproductive cycle using electron microscopes and scanning techniques unavailable to earlier generations. His work resulted in three Emmy Award-winning documentaries: The Miracle of Life (1982), Odyssey of Life (1996) and Life's Greatest Miracle (2001), produced with NOVA and the BBC.
The honors accorded to Nilsson reflected his unusual position at the intersection of science and visual culture. He was the first recipient of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 1980. An honorary doctorate in medicine from Karolinska Institutet followed in 1976, with further honorary doctorates from Technische Universität Braunschweig (2002) and Linköping University (2003). In 2002 the Swedish government awarded him the Illis quorum. The Lennart Nilsson Award, established in 1998 and presented annually at Karolinska Institutet's installation ceremony, now carries his name as a prize for outstanding scientific photography.
At auction, Nilsson's photographic prints appear primarily at major Swedish houses. His top recorded result on Auctionist is 14,387 SEK for a gelatin silver print of 'Äggledartratten' (the fallopian tube), with further works including a signed 1988 flower photograph and the 1965 'Rymdfararen' (The Spaceman). Items have appeared at Bukowskis Stockholm, Stockholms Auktionsverk and Auktionshuset Kolonn. The small number of works in circulation - eleven items in total - reflects the specialized nature of his output and the institutional context in which most of his archive is held. Nilsson died in Stockholm on January 28, 2017, aged 94.