Last year, this topic "seriously walked" on the Internet, but somehow I passed it by. Now I have read in more detail and I do not lose the feeling of some kind of magic. It is simply difficult to imagine all these mechanisms laid down by nature in living beings and "polished" over millions of years.
Photographer Lennart Nielson became famous throughout the world for his work, which showed the history of a person's life before his birth. For the first time, the master's photobook titled "A Child is Born" saw the world in 1965. Pictures of the human embryo so amazed the public that Nielson immediately became famous, and his pictures were included in a number of world famous glossy magazines. It was possible to photograph the development of the embryo using a cystoscope, a medical device that examines the bladder from the inside. Nielson attached a camera and light guide to it and took thousands of pictures of the baby's life inside the womb.
This is how it looks …
The sperm in the fallopian tube moves towards the egg.
Lennart Nilsson was born on August 24, 1922 in the Swedish city of Stangnas into a family that loved photography.
Even in childhood, Lennart was more interested in the microcosm, the one that can only be seen through a microscope. Armed with a microscope and a camera, he penetrated into the worlds inaccessible to a simple look, the inner worlds of a person, in the direct sense of the word.
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Nielson began his career in photography in the mid-1940s, working as a freelance writer for various Swedish publications. Already at this time, such works as "Midwife in Lapland" and "Polar Bear Hunt in Spitsbergen" brought him international attention. Lennart began his experiments in the field of microphotography in the mid-1950s and at the same time actively collaborated with various scientific and medical organizations.
Egg.
For the first time he managed to photograph a human fetus in 1957. An unusual "reportage" shooting from the "bowels" of the female body became possible after Nielson, after a series of experiments, managed to combine a microcamera and a microlight, fixing them on a cystoscope tube (this device was used to examine the bladder from the inside) - this is how unique shots appeared illustrating the process the birth of the human embryo and its development.
Fateful meeting.
“When I first saw the fetus, it was 15 weeks old and was sucking on a thumb,” Nielson said. “But the magazine editors wanted me to remove the fetus's face. It took many years."
Nielson gained international fame in 1965 when LIFE magazine published 16 pages of photographs of the human embryo. These photos were immediately reproduced also in Stern, Paris Match, The Sunday Times and other magazines.
In the same year, Nielson's book of photographs, "A Child is Born", was published, the 8 millionth edition of which sold out in the first few days. This book has gone through several reprints and is still one of the most successful illustrated books in the history of this kind of album.
One in 200 million father's sperm has broken through the membrane of the egg.
In the future, Nielson continued his work, making not only photographs, but also films.
In the 1960s - early 1970s, Nielson collaborated with LIFE, taking photomicrographs not only of various stages of human intrauterine development, but also of other physiological processes inside human and animal organisms.
Spaceships Voyager I and Voyager II, carrying messages to alien civilizations, among other documents, are also completed with photographs of Nilsson. He continues his scientific and photographic activity to this day.
Sperm in a cut. The head contains all the genetic material.
A week later, the embryo, sliding down the fallopian tube, moves into the uterus.
After another week, the embryo attaches to the uterine lining.
On the 18th day, the heart of the embryo begins to pulsate.
22 day of embryo development. The gray matter is the future brain.
28th day after fertilization.
5 weeks, length 9 mm, already guessed a face with holes for mouth, nostrils and eyes.
8 weeks.
10 weeks. The eyelids are already half open.
16 weeks.
A network of blood vessels is visible through the thin skin.
18 weeks. The embryo can perceive sounds from the outside world.
20 weeks. Height is about 20 cm.
36 weeks. A month later, the baby will be born.