Stunningly displayed in its pages, and in an ethereal color, were images of embryos apparently still in the womb. For the first time, the camera had captured something of their mysterious translucent presence.
In the half-century that followed, a global audience came to admire what many considered to be some of the most astonishing photographs of the late 20th century. What was not known, however, was that many of the images in the book, especially of the older embryos, were of the aborted.
It took over a decade to produce the book that would come to be known as A Child is Born. A pioneer of the electron microscope, from the start Nilsson was in the vanguard of photographing the unborn. In the 12 years he worked on this book project, he was assisted by five hospitals that had agreed to collaborate with him. Some of the photographs were of fetuses from the earliest stages of pregnancy; often the subjects were obtained through miscarriage or ectopic pregnancies. During this journalistic assignment, however, Nilsson also turned to medical facilities carrying out abortions to help him find pictorial material. Abortion had been legal in Sweden since 1938. After the Second World War, the law was liberalized further; by 1965, in that country there were over 6,000 abortions per year. After having discovered suitable specimens, it is claimed, Nilsson would clean, frame and then light the aborted, before, finally, beginning to photograph.
But it’s disingenuous to say that it’s all 'shopped, and you can tell by the pixels… it’s been around longer than NASA.