Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson showed the world photographs of the origin of human life, from conception to birth.

The world heard about Lennart Nilsson back in 1965, when his photos were published on the pages of LIFE, which depicted a human embryo at all stages of its development. The photographs immediately spread across various publications.

Microscopes and cameras have been Nilsson's passion since childhood. Over time, ambitions formed into a profession to show the world the beauty of the birth of human life from the very beginning. He managed to take the first photographs of the fetus already in 1957, but their quality left much to be desired.

Nilsson managed to get the perfect shots using a medical tool for examining the bladder - a cystoscope, to which was attached a camera with a tiny light source. It was with the help of this device that photographs were taken recording the life of the embryo in the womb.

Nilsson created something truly miraculous: for the first time, people could see with their own eyes the conception and early development of human life.

Lennart Nilsson died on January 28, 2017 at the age of 95. Until the end of his days, he never ceased to be interested in science and photography.

20 PHOTOS

1. The sperm moves down the fallopian tube towards the egg to fertilize it. 2. Photo of the egg.
3. Decisive moment.
4. Out of hundreds of millions of sperm, only one can fertilize an egg. 5. The genetic material is located in the head of the sperm.
6. After a week, the embryo begins its journey to the uterus to attach to its walls.
7. In another week, the embryo will attach to the wall of the uterus. 8. Embryo at 22 days gestation. The gray area becomes the child's brain. 9. By the 18th day, the fetus’s heart begins to beat. If you have been putting off making an appointment with a gynecologist until now, now is the time to do it. The gynecologist will prescribe an ultrasound and determine that the fetus is normally attached to the wall of the uterus.
10. 4 weeks after fertilization.
11. At five weeks, the fetus is 9 millimeters long. The photo shows a developing face, and the holes are the future nostrils, mouth and eyes.
12. 6 weeks of development. The outer cells of the embryo join the free surface of the uterine wall, forming the placenta, through which the fetus receives all its nutrients.
13. 8 weeks after conception.
14. 10 weeks after conception. The eyelids are half open. In a few days they will be fully formed.
15. After 10 weeks, the embryo uses its arms to explore the world around it.
16. 16 weeks after conception.
17. Blood vessels are visible through the skin.
18. 18 weeks. The fetus can now hear sounds from the outside world.

Today, August 24, the Swedish photographer and scientist, the man who went down in the history of photography with photographs of human embryos taken in natural conditions, the first modern photojournalist in Switzerland, celebrates his 93rd birthday. Lennart Nilsson.

Lennart Nilsson was born into a family of photographers, his father and uncle were photographers. When Lennart was 12 years old, his father gave him his first camera. At 15, Lennart watches a documentary about Louis Pasteur and becomes fascinated by microscopy. Over the next few years, Lennart Nilsson acquired a microscope and took microscopic photographs of insects.

His professional career as a photographer began in the mid-40s. He became a freelance photographer for the Stockholm publication Ahlen & Akerlund. One of Lennart's first assignments was to create a series of photographs dedicated to the liberation of Norway in 1945. Some of the photographer's early works, published in Life magazine, such as "Midwife in Lapland", 1945, "Hunting on Spitsbergen", 1947, "Fishermen on the Congo River", 1948, brought the photographer international popularity.

In 1954, 87 portraits of famous Swedes by Lennart Nilsson were published in the large publication Sweden in Profile. In 1955, the photographer published his own book called “Report,” which included the author’s early works. In 1963, the book Hallelujah, dedicated to the Swedish Salvation Army, was published.

In the mid-50s, Lennart Nilsson began experimenting with new photographic techniques, trying to get the maximum possible close-up in photography. His personal achievements in this, magnified by the thin and sensitive endoscope that became available by the mid-60s, allowed the photographer to create pioneering photographs of human blood vessels and the insides of the body at the highest possible magnification. In 1965, Lennart Nilsson achieves worldwide popularity thanks to the fact that a photograph depicting a human embryo at an early stage of development appears on the cover of Life magazine. Lennart Nilsson's photographs of human embryos travel from publication to publication. In 1965, a book entitled “The Birth of a Child” was published.

No matter how inconvenient and immoral it may be, the fact remains that in order to show the development of a living fetus, Lennart Nilsson used aborted material and photographed the fetus after the abortion, i.e., already dead. Working with dead material allowed the photographer to conduct more successful experiments with lighting, backgrounds and compositions. However, the origins of the photographs and the photographer's working methods are rarely mentioned.

In 1969, the photographer began using a scanning electron microscope to obtain images of the internal functions of the human body. Lennart Nilsson is credited with taking the first photograph of the human immunodeficiency virus, and he also became the first photographer to take a picture of the SARS virus in 2003.

Lennart Nilsson was born on August 24, 1922 in the Swedish city of Stangnas into a family that loved photography.

Even in his childhood, Lennart was more interested in the microworld, the one that can only be seen through a microscope. Armed with a microscope and a camera, he penetrated into worlds inaccessible to the naked eye, the inner worlds of man, in the literal sense of the word.

Sperm in the fallopian tube

Nilsson began his journey in photography in the mid-1940s, working as a freelancer for various Swedish publications. Already at this time, such works as “Midwife in Lapland” and “Polar Bear Hunt in Spitsbergen” brought him international attention. Lennart began his experiments in the field of microphotography in the mid-1950s and at the same time actively collaborated with various scientific and medical organizations.

2. Ovum

3. One of the 200 million paternal spermatozoa, having broken through the membrane of the egg, literally pours into it...

4. Sperm

He managed to photograph a human fetus for the first time in 1957. An unusual “reportage” filming from the “depths” of a woman’s body became possible after Nilsson, after a series of experiments, managed to combine a micro-camera and a micro-illuminator, attaching them to the tube of a cystoscope (this device was used to examine the bladder from the inside) - this is how unique footage illustrating the process appeared the birth of the human embryo and its development.

5. Fruit

6. Fruit

“When I first saw the fetus, he was 15 weeks old and sucking his thumb,” Nilsson said. “But the magazine editors wanted me to film the fetal face.” It took many years.”

Nilsson gained international fame in 1965 when LIFE magazine published 16 pages of photographs of a human embryo. These photographs were also immediately reproduced in Stern, Paris Match, The Sunday Times and other magazines.

10. 10 weeks. The eyelids are already half open. They will be fully formed within a few days.

11. 16 weeks after fertilization. The skeleton consists mainly of a flexible shaft and a network of blood vessels visible through thin skin.

The same year, Nilsson's book of photographs, A Child is Born, was published, the eight-millionth edition of which was sold out in the first few days. This book went through several reprints and still remains one of the most successfully sold illustrated books in the history of this kind of albums.

12. 16 weeks. Curious baby is already using his hands to explore his surroundings

13. 18 weeks. About 14 cm. The embryo can now perceive sounds from the outside world.

14. 20 weeks after fertilization

Subsequently, Nilsson continued his work, making not only photographs, but also films.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Nilsson collaborated with LIFE, taking photomicrographs not only of various stages of human fetal development, but also of other physiological processes within human and animal bodies.

15. 26 weeks after fertilization

16. Lennart Nilsson

The spaceships Voyager I and Voyager II, carrying messages to alien civilizations, are, among other documents, also equipped with photographs of Nilsson. He continues his scientific and photographic activities to this day.

Not for children about children or life before birth Many photographs are the work of Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson. In 1957, Lennart Nilsson began taking photographs using an endoscope, an instrument that allows one to see the inner world of a person. When he presented his work to the editors of Life magazine, they did not believe him at first. Now an hour of photographs are the result of computer processing, but they do not lose their value because of this. The technique of medical photography brought him worldwide fame. The sperm in the folds of the mucous membrane of the fallopian tubes moves towards the egg. Longitudinal section of a spermatozoon. The genetic material is contained in the head of the sperm. Before entering the cervix, sperm represent the 500 millionth cohort at the start! When approaching the germ cell, there are no more than a hundred of them, capable of destroying its protective shell. From 3-7 hours after ejaculation: sperm “unwind” the egg and only the strongest and luckiest sperm will participate in fertilization.
Embryo attached to the uterine lining (8 days) 20 hours after ejaculation: Inside the fertilized egg, the nuclei of the male and female cells unite and new chromosomes (genetic material) are formed. 1st day after fertilization: the cell begins its journey from the tube where fertilization occurs to the uterus. Two days after the meeting of the “winners”: four new cells, surrounded by small nutrient “communities”, glide towards the uterus. 4th day. Morula stage. Embryo development. Gray color - future brain. (22 days) The heart is formed and begins to beat. (24 days) 28 days pregnant
40 days of pregnancy: placenta, umbilical cord and embryo can be seen Fourth week of life. The size of the embryo is 6 mm. You can already discern the outlines of the back and brain. A convex ball is visible - the yolk sac, a small embryonic appendage that will disappear by 11