A Child is Born

”Lennart Nilsson stunned the world in 1965 with the first photographs of pre-natal life. Half a century ago the planet was so different; even though human ingenuity with the atom meant that we had to come to terms with the possibility of self-destruction, there was optimism that science could save us. Although the political landscape was clouded, we were hopeful that a new generation would cross the political barriers. We could recognize our common humanity, regardless of manmade boundaries. We were the inheritors of the ‘family of man’. Lennart’s pictures remind us we are born from a common process, we all embody the outcome of the same interior encounter and we all share the same emotions that drive us to seek or offer the protection of the parent. His photographs would not have astonished us were they simply data — cold as laboratory information.
The pictures operate at another level of human signal and response. The unborn child in the last stages of the pregnancy, its human features fully recognizable, is as beautifully photographed by Lennart as the sacred newborn was once painted by Renaissance masters in the arms of the Madonna. The photographs can touch a deep emotion — a universal emotion.

Mark Holborn

Läs Charlotte Jansens artikel i The Guardian om bilderna