Stockholm —
Nilsson was celebrated as a photographer of nearly singular genius. Drawing upon a primal sense of curiosity, he harnessed cutting-edge technology to capture on film such drama as human conception and the infection of a cell by the AIDS virus.
He was best known for his images of embryos and fetuses, as embryos become known about eight weeks after a sperm fertilizes an egg. Life magazine sparked a sensation when it featured his work in the 1965 story “Drama of Life Before Birth.” Eight million copies of the edition — with a cover image of an 18-week-old fetus cocooned in the amniotic sac, immediately recognizable as an incipient person — were sold.
Inside the magazine were portraits of the most ethereal quality, depicting beings never before seen by most eyes, and yet intimately familiar. At 6½ weeks of gestation, an embryo displayed clearly visible hands. By the 8-week mark, a viewer gazing upon Nilsson’s photography could perform that cherished rite of delivery rooms and count 10 tiny toes. At 18 weeks, he captured a fetus sucking its thumb.
Nilsson used custom-designed equipment described by Life as “a specially built super wide-angle lens and a tiny flash beam at the end of a surgical scope.” But his photographs elicited amazement, not at human technological achievement, but rather at the very fact — some said miracle — of human existence.
Nilsson’s embryonic and in utero photography later appeared in A Child Is Born, a best-selling volume translated into many languages and reprinted in numerous editions over the years. On television, it was featured in documentaries including The Miracle of Life (1983) and Odyssey of Life (1996). In the 1970s, his photos were sent into space aboard the Voyager space probes — a calling card from mankind for any being that might happen upon it.
On Earth, Nilsson’s images held profound meaning for abortion rights opponents, who pointed to the photography to demonstrate how quickly cells combine and divide to form recognizable human life. Nilsson, whose subjects included dead embryos as well as live ones, did not venture into discussions of when life begins.
“If you are religious, you may believe that life starts 24 hours after fertilization,” he remarked. “Some scientists think it’s when the heart starts beating, 16 to 18 days after fertilization. It depends on yourself. I’m just a journalist telling you things. It’s my mission in life.”
Lars Olof Lennart Nilsson was born in Strangnas, Sweden, on Aug. 24, 1922. He was 11 when he received his first camera.
His marriage to Birgit Svensson ended in divorce. Their son, Kjell Nilsson, died in 2013. In 1989, he married Catharina Tjornedal. Besides his wife, survivors include two stepchildren, Anne Fjellstrom and Thomas Fjellstrom, all of Stockholm; a sister; and three grandchildren.
In an incident memorable to many of his countrymen, a Swedish television station once aired Nilsson’s all-too-revealing close-ups of human teeth. “When the TV news showed pictures of what we have on our teeth — enlarged to 100,000 times the actual size — the Swedish people choked on their evening coffee,” Per Lindstrom, a professor of photography, recalled in a tribute on Nilsson’s 90th birthday. “All the toothbrushes in the stores sold out the next day.”