A Child Is Born

LENNART NILSSON was born in 1922 near Stockholm. He embarked on his career in the mid-1940s, when modern photojournalism was beginning to expand in Sweden. His breakthrough photo-essays were published both in Sweden and abroad, for magazines such as Life, Picture Post and Illustrated. In the mid-1950s Nilsson started experimenting with new photographic techniques, using microscopes to ‘get closer’. His revealing macro studies of the human body’s inner mysteries were a big sensation and were published in magazines and books worldwide. In 1965 his groundbreaking images illustrating the beginning of life, from conception to birth, were published in the book, A Child is Born, which has since been translated into twenty languages. He has also made several award-winning films. Lennart Nilsson was designated an Honorary Doctor of Medicine by the Karolinska Institute in 1976 and he is Honorary Doctor of Philosophy of the Technische Unversitat Braunschweig in Germany (2002) as well as of Linkoping University in Sweden (2003).