The Mosquito
No object is too small, no subject too minor, difficult, or uncomfortable for Lennart Nilsson. In 1976, he decided to take the first microscopic image of a mosquito bite.
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The mosquito (macro), 1979 -
Life Magazine 1980 -
Life Magazine 1980 -
Life Magazine 1980
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The mosquito (macro), 1979 -
Life Magazine 1980 -
Life Magazine 1980 -
Life Magazine 1980
Together with his friend Berndt Ödarp, an entomologist at the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (Swedish Museum of Natural History), they travelled around Sweden to collect suitable mosquitoes. Back at the laboratory of the Karolinska Institutet, Berndt served as the first victim.
“For almost three years I tried to photograph a mosquito feeding on human blood. In the end, I succeeded in capturing the image where the proboscis penetrates the skin. To be able to photograph on human skin, I needed an extremely willing test subject. Just as the mosquito struck, it was sprayed with a nerve agent, and then both the skin and the insect were cut away with a scalpel from the anesthetized arm of the test subject. Thanks to this dramatic approach, the penetration could be photographed for the first time.”