Lennart Nilsson is one of the extremely small group of Swedes who are known all over the world. His pioneering images of life before birth sparked a great deal of excitement when they were published as "The Drama of Life before Birth" in Life magazine in 1965. His book A Child is Born, also published in that same year, has been translated into more than 20 languages and has sold tens of millions of copies.
Nilsson began his life in photography at the start of the 1940s, providing reportage and portrait photographs for various Swedish illustrated magazines. Even today, more than fifty years on, he says he is still a photojournalist - he tries to tell a story with his photographs.
Right at the start of his career, Nilsson did a number of scientific reportages and became interested in making the invisible visible. He made images of developing foetuses, which he showed to colleagues at Life magazine on a visit to New York in 1953. Since that time, with increasing skill and ever-more sophisticated equipment, Nilsson has made the whole of human evolution visible in an easily comprehensible way. He has also succeeded in producing images of viruses, bacteria, DNA etc. for specialists in medicine - and for the rest of us.
This exhibition includes a selection of Nilsson's scientific images and classic photographs from A Child is Born, along with new, exciting pictures - never before shown in the museum context - of infant development and from the world of the body. There are also thermal-camera shots; images of the brain, rheumatism and bacteria, including a very recent picture of the bird-flu virus.
A documentary on Lennart Nilsson - Mästerfotografen (the master photographer, 52 min, in Swedish) will be shown at the exhibition. There is also a thermal camera, which allows visitors to see the temperature variations in their own bodies displayed in various colours.
To coincide with the exhibition, Nilsson's new book, LIFE, will be published by Jonathan Cape in London, and as LIVET by Bokförlaget Max Ström in Sweden - unique images of our inner universe selected by Mark Holborn. The book details Nilsson's work , comparing his trailblazing achievements to mankind's voyages to the moon. It says that, alongside Leonardo da Vinci, Nilsson has done most to help us see the inner workings of the human body.
For the exhibition the Hasselblad Center is releasing a commemorative box set, containing signed copies of two books: Lennart Nilsson - LIFE; and Michael Light - FULL MOON. Limited edition of 100 (25 of those in English).
Gunilla Knape