Lennart Nilsson photography reveals a world turned inside out

 

 

Top: A view from inside the human eye, looking out through the pupil. Bottom: The interior of the human eye.

Born in Strängnäs, Sweden in 1922, Lennart Nilsson has been the foremost expert and pioneer in medical microphotography for more than half a century. An active member of the Rotary Club of Solna, Nilsson came to worldwide attention in 1965 with the publication of his Life magazine cover story, “The Drama of Life before Birth.” That article and the book A Child Is Born contained stunning photographs of the human embryo from conception to birth. The book was published in 20 countries and is still in print.

From 1965 through 1972, Nilsson worked under contract with Life as he presented amazing microphotography of the heart and heart attacks, the brain, and other parts of the human body that had never been seen in such intimate close-ups. His innovation – beginning in 1970 – of taking images from a scanning electron microscope with macro lenses and wide-angle special optics allowed him to see magnification of hundreds of thousands of times in 3-D.

While continuing with still photography, Nilsson also produced motion picture documentaries of microphotography, which won Emmys in 1982 and 1996. Between 1987 and 1989, he produced a series of six documentaries and two books for the National Geographic Society. In 1996, he completed a three-part documentary series on his microphotographic work The Miracle of Life.

Nilsson, who will be 86 on 24 August, has been showered with virtually every honor for photography and scientific research in the world. His photographs from A Child Is Born were sent into the outer reaches of the universe aboard Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Today, Nilsson works with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and is pursuing microphotography of viruses as well as a new documentary, The Miracle of Love, for PBS’s Nova. We wanted to know more about how he developed his fascination for microphotography.

The Rotarian: How did your interest in photography develop?

Lennart Nilsson: Dad gave me my first camera when I was 11. I remember very well my first pictures of a laburnum bush. And even then, I thought it would be exciting to know what the laburnum looked like inside. Dad built my first enlarger from a 9-by-12 camera. He was a good amateur photographer himself and taught me the basics. I especially remember how fascinated I was that you could reproduce what you were seeing. So the answer is probably that there never was a choice for me.

How did the extraordinary 16-page presentation of “The Drama of Life before Birth” happen in Life magazine?
The first job I did for Life on an exclusive basis was when Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations secretary-general in 1953. I traveled to New York with him and photographed him in his office on the 38th floor of the UN Building. I had my first embryo pictures along with me on that trip. “Unbelievable!” they said at Life. I thought so too! I didn’t know anything about the development of the fetus and had to learn from scratch. But they were incredibly enthusiastic, and 12 years later, in 1965, they published my big story on human reproduction.

You worked on that story for 12 years?
Yes. One of the pictures was the face of an embryo inside the uterus taken with an endoscope with an electronic flash. And I remember that the editors wanted to have a witness to say that this was really the case, because it was a very sharp picture of just the face, the head of the fetus inside the womb. But this was not my very first endoscopic picture. The very first, we took in 1957 – but in that case, I didn’t get the face. I just got the legs, hands, feet, sex organs, and so on.

After your lengthy efforts to photograph living fetuses, do you have an opinion about when life begins?
Right now, nobody can pinpoint when life begins, whether it is at conception or a few days later, or even a few weeks after that. It is clear that life begins early but that the fetus would not survive outside the womb. There are biological, ethical, legal, political, and religious evaluations on the creation of life. So the only answer I can give is that it’s up to each of us to form an opinion.

Your work depends upon technology as well as art, does it not?
Clearly. The technology has changed a lot. Besides my Hasselblads and Nikons, which I use for normal photo-stories, I have my light- and scanning electron microscopes, made by Zeiss and Japan’s JEOL. My endoscopes have a focal distance of less than 1 millimeter, which lets me take razor-sharp pictures inside the body. The most useful tool so far has been a flexible endoscope with a focal distance of less than one-tenth of a millimeter. It’s no bigger than eight-tenths of a millimeter in diameter, including lens and case, and can thus be introduced into various parts of the body rather like a catheter.

Can you explain how your images of the iris of the eye change pattern and color?
The color depends on the rods and cones of the nerve cells on the retina, which tells the brain.

What can you tell us about your photo of the inverted retinal image of a young woman  that looks very much like the exact way a camera captures a photograph?
This is a special image to me. My dream was to take a picture of a beautiful girl on the street and have the same image photographed through the eye. The photo isn’t really sharp but it will get sharp in the brain. 

Your recent work photographing viruses sounds very exciting too. Can you tell us about that?
It began about 10 years ago. I got a specimen in Stockholm, and I went over to Paris to look at it with Dr. Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute. He was the very first to discover the AIDS virus. When I saw the first image, I was really shaken. I saw something extremely sharp, because I had a new, high-resolution scanning electron microscope from Japan; the resolution was unbelievable. I thought, this is something very remarkable. And when I pressed the button to take the pictures, I felt something very unusual, because [AIDS] was a great killer in the world – and is still a great killer in the world.

Can you tell us about the television documentary you are creating for Nova called The Miracle of Love?
It will be about the chemistry of love. Everything before the kiss.

We understand that you have been taking some photographs in Buzz Aldrin’s territory, too. Do you have plans to look at outer space as well as inner space?
Yes. Sometimes, in the country, I take photographs of the universe. I have an idea to try to photograph the stars and the sky in a new way with a telescope – to make them more familiar. I have an idea – I have already taken some still pictures of it. So, maybe we can do something in the future. You know, I have to do one thing and concentrate on it. But this is a dream I have.