Lennart Nilsson

The Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson (1922 - 2017) is world-renowned. In 1965, the American magazine Life published the 16-page feature “Drama of Life Before Birth.” It became one of the magazine's fastest-selling issues, alongside the one on the assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963) and the moon landing (1969). The series of images about our inception marked Nilsson's major international breakthrough. It was primarily the aesthetic quality of the images that gave them their immense impact. Nilsson was awarded The American Society of Magazine Photographers’ “Photographer of the Year” for the feature in Life in 1965.

The book “A Child Is Born” was first published in 1965 and has sold millions of copies worldwide. It has been released in 6 editions and translated into around 20 languages. Since the 1970s, the images have been exhibited in shows around the globe, most recently at Paris Photo (2019), WestLicht. Schauplatz für Fotografie, Vienna (2020), and Gävle Art Centre (2022).

The cover image in Life in 1965 has been selected by Time Magazine as one of the hundred most influential photographs. Lennart Nilsson began his career as a photographer in the 1940s. His images reached an international audience even then, with reports from Svalbard, northern Sweden, and the then Belgian Congo. He became one of the most successful photojournalists in Sweden at that time.

When Nilsson broke through with his series on our inception in the 1960s, he also shifted his photographic focus to medical science. An additional five covers of Life Magazine featured Nilsson's images between 1966 and 1971, as well as in picture magazines such as Paris Match, Stern, and Epoca. He was a pioneer in scientific photography and produced books, magazine features, and films on scientific themes until the early 2000s.

Lennart Nilsson was awarded the first Hasselblad Award in 1980, The Infinity Awards, Master of Photography in 1992, and the title of Professor in 2009. His films have won three Emmy Awards, and he is represented in several of the world's major and most established museums, including the British Museum in London, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Nationalmuseum, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.