Book Review: A Child is Born by Lennart Nilsson
Eight weeks. The rapidly-growing embryo is well protected in the foetal sac. Picture: LENNART NILSSON
The beginnings of life are fascinating and humbling to watch, Lennart Nilsson’s “A Child is Born” gives us an insight that seems still to defy the age of it’s original publication.
In 1965 Lennart Nilsson published images from inside the human uterus, the first photographs of human embryos. The book that followed, “A Child is Born”, wowed audiences worldwide, offering the unseen world within our bodies in an unprecedented view. The photographs themselves being the dominant driving force of the narrative.
Lennart Nilsson (born 1922) is a Swedish photographer and scientist. He is famous for his photographs of prenatal life and other medical subjects once considered unphotographable, and more generally for his extreme macro photography. He is also considered to be among Sweden’s first modern photojournalists.
20 weeks. Hair, known as lanugo, covers the entire head Picture: LENNART NILSSON
His book, “A Child is Born” is now republished and remastered, the images are rendered in astonishing detail utilising revolutionary new photographic technology. Lennart Nilsson documents the miracle of human reproduction: the egg travelling down the fallopian tube; the sperm racing to meet it; the moment of fertilization; the very first cell division; the tiny embryo attaching to the uterine wall; the growth of eyes, ears, fingers and toes; and finally the moment of delivery itself - providing an astonishing glimpse of the first moments of life.
In this, the fully revised fifth edition, A Child is Born is redefined for a new age.
At 16 weeks the foetus uses its hands to explore its own body and its surroundings. Picture: LENNART NILSSON
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