Lars Olof Lennart Nilsson was born in Strangnas, Sweden on August 24, 1922. He received his first camera when he was 11. At the age of 15, he began taking microphotographs of bugs after seeing a documentary film about Louis Pasteur. He began his freelance career covering the liberation of Nazi-occupied Norway in the last days of World War II. After the war, he produced photo essays on a polar bear hunt and on a midwife who delivered 1,500 children in the Swedish mountains.
He turned to microphotography after becoming fascinated by a fetus in a glass jar at Sabbatsbergs Hospital in Stockholm. Life published his first picture of an embryo in 1953. His first collection followed a human embryo's maturation from the instant a sperm cell fertilizes an egg. His photographs appeared in Life magazine in 1965 under the title The Drama of Life Before Birth. It was later expanded in book form as A Child Is Born. His other projects used micro-cameras to expose cerebral hemorrhages, the virus that causes AIDS, and tar-laden smokers' lungs. His other books included Behold Man: A Photographic Journey of Discovery Inside the Body. He also created documentaries including The Miracle of Life and Odyssey of Life. His films won three Emmy Awards. He died on January 28, 2017 at the age of 94.
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