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Colouring the Human Landscapes
Lennart Nilsson and the Spectacular World of Scanning Electron Micrographs
In: NunciusThis article explores the relationship between Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson’s scanning electron micrographs and commercial culture from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. By retracing how Nilsson’s micrographs of the internal structures of the human body were made, circulated, and received, its aim is to investigate three aspects of this relationship. First, it highlights how the complex and sometimes conflicting interplay between the photographer and various actors in science, industry and the media shaped the pictures and their trajectories. Second, it analyses the processes used to colour Nilsson’s original black-and-white micrographs in relation to tendencies in the media and the advertising industry during this period. Third, it examines what motivated Nilsson and his collaborators in their use of colour and also the critical debates concerning the spectacular and commercial qualities of his pictures. In the concluding section, the implications of this analysis for the history of the objectivity of scientific images is discussed.
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1
Jan Lindberg, Lennart Nilsson, “Embryonalstudier med svepelektronmikroskop,” Läkartidningen, 1974, 71:3181–3196.
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2
Solveig Jülich, “Lennart Nilssons tidiga fosterfotografier: Från abortdebatt till sexualundervisning,” in In på bara huden: Medicinhistoriska studier tillägnade Karin Johannisson, edited by Torbjörn Gustafsson Chorell, Maja Bondestam (Nora: Nya Doxa, 2010).
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3
Lennart Nilsson, Albert Rosenfeld, “Drama of Life before Birth,” Life, April 30, 1965:54–72A; Lennart Nilsson, Axel Ingelman-Sundberg, Claes Wirsén, Ett barn blir till: En bildskildring av de nio månaderna före födelsen: En praktisk rådgivare för den blivande mamman (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1965). The first American and British editions were published in 1966 and 1967. For a recent study, see Solveig Jülich, “The Making of a Best-selling Book on Reproduction: Lennart Nilsson’s A Child Is Born,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, forthcoming, Summer 2015.
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4
Solveig Jülich, “Objektiva bilder: Ideal och strategier,” Medicinen blir till vetenskap: Karolinska Institutet under två århundraden, edited by Karin Johannisson, Ingemar Nilsson, Roger Qvarsell (Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet University Press, 2010).
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6
Lennart Nilsson, Kroppens försvar: En bilderbok om hoten mot kroppen och hur kroppens immunförsvar fungerar (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1985). The full title of the English edition was The Body Victorious: The Illustrated Story of Our Immune System and Other Defences of the Human Body (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). The National Geographic publications include C.D.B. Bryan, The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery (Oxford: Phaidon, 1987); Robert M. Poole (ed.), The Incredible Machine (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1986).
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7
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women (New York: Routledge, 1991), p. 222.
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10
Cyrus C.M. Mody, “Corporations, Universities, and Instrumental Communities: Commercializing Probe Microscopy, 1981–1996,” Technology and Culture, 2005, 47:56–80.
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11
Virginia Berridge, Kelly Loughlin (eds.), Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media: Producing Health in the Twentieth Century (New York: Routledge, 2005); Jean-Paul Gaudillière, Ilana Löwy (eds.), The Invisible Industrialist: Manufactures and the Production of Scientific Knowledge (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998); Karl Grandin, Nina Wormbs, Sven Widmalm (eds.), The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, Nobel Symposium 123 (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/USA, 2004); Bernward Joerges, Terry Shinn (eds.), Instrumentation: Between Science, State and Industry (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000); Steven Shapin, “Ivory Trade,” London Review of Books, September 11, 2003, 25:15–19.
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13
Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 2007). For critical discussions, see Theodore M. Porter, “The Objective Self,” Victorian Studies, 2008, 50:641–647; Jennifer Tucker, “Objectivity, Collective Sight, and Scientific Personae,” Victorian Studies, 2008: 50:648–657; Amanda Anderson, “Epistemological Liberalism,” Victorian Studies, 2008, 50:658–665; Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison, “Response: Objectivity and Its Critics,” Victorian Studies, 2008, 50:666–677.
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15
Robert Darnton, “What is the History of Books?,” in The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), pp. 107–135; “An Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” The American Historical Review, 2000, 105:1–35.
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21
J.L. Locher, Mark Boyle, Mark Boyle’s Journey to the Surface of the Earth (Stuttgart: Hansjörg Mayer, 1978), pp. 124–130. According to his son, Sebastian Boyle, these SEM images had been taken at Brunel University of London. See e-mail from Sebastian Boyle to the author (May 21, 2010).
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22
David Scharf, Magnifications: Photography with the Scanning Electron Microscope (New York: Schocken Books, 1977).
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29
Lennart Nilsson, “The Worlds within Us,” Life, January 9, 1970:40–56, p. 40; Lennart Nilsson, Stig Nordfeldt, “Detta är du: En okänd värld på väg att upptäckas,” Se, 1970, 10:30–45.
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31
Lennart Nilsson, “The Corridors of the Heart,” Life, January 19, 1968:22–31.
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36
Lennart Nilsson, Jan Lindberg, Se människan: En fotografisk upptäcktsfärd i din kropp (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1973). The full title of the English edition was Behold Man: A Photographic Journey of Discovery Inside the Body (London: Harrap, 1974); Nilsson, Lindberg, The Body Victorious (cit. note 6).
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39
Eva Patek, The Epithelium of the Human Fallopian Tube: A Surface Ultrastructural and Cytochemical Study (Diss. Stockholm: Karolinska Institutet, 1974), p. 26.
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44
Eric Dyring, Annagreta Dyring (eds.), Synligt och osynligt: Vetenskapens nya bilder (Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 1973). Also see the interview with Pettersson (cit. note 37).
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45
Lennart Nilsson, Stig Nordfeldt, “Människans okända tid,” Damernas värld, 1974 (no. 35–38).
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50
Allan Danielsson, “Svepelektronmikroskopet,” Kosmos, 1970, 47:127–139; Per-Gotthard Lundquist, Åke Flock, Jan Wersäll, “Raster- und Elektronen-Mikroskopie des menschlichen Labyrinths,” Monatsschrift für Ohrenheilkunde und Laryngo-Rhinologie, 1971, 105:285–300. Also see the interviews with Flock and Lundquist (cit. note 28).
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51
Michael Lynch, Samuel Y. Edgerton Jr., “Aesthetics and Digital Image Processing: Representational Craft in Contemporary Astronomy,” in Picturing Power: Visual Depiction and Social Relations, edited by Gordon Fyfe, John Law (London: Routledge, 1988). Also see Elizabeth A. Kessler, “Resolving the Nebulae: The Science and Art of Representing M51,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2007, 38:477–491.
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56
Sven Möller, “Falkenbergares färgmetod möjliggjorde reportage för en kvarts miljard läsare,” Hallandsposten, February 24, 1970.
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57
Mary Panzer, Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955 (New York: Aperture Foundation/World Press Photo, 2005), p. 24.
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59
Stig Nordfeldt, “Detta är en cancercell!” Veckojournalen, 1969, 47:8–9, 39.
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64
Charles R. Acland (ed.), Residual Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). The term “residual” stems from Raymond Williams’s study of culture’s emergent, dominant and residual forms. See his book, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 122.
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68
Lennart Nilsson, Lars Hamberger, Ett barn blir till, 4. ed. (Stockholm: Bonnier, 2003). The American and British editions were published in the same year. Also see the interview with Hamberger (cit. note 66).
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72
Lennart Nilsson, Nära naturen: En upptäcktsfärd i naturens mikrokosmos (Stockholm: Bonnier fakta, 1984), p. 6; Nilsson, Kroppens försvar (cit. note 6), p. 195; Nilsson, Hamberger, Ett barn blir till (cit. note 68), p. 236.
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76
Bengt Cederback, “Människokroppen i bild,” Upsala Nya Tidning, March 5, 1974. Also see Bertil Walldén, “Insyn i människokroppen,” Vestmanland Läns Tidning, November 17, 1973.
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86
Anita Lagercrantz-Ohlin, “Han är en kamera i mikrovärlden,” Svenska Dagbladet, November 16, 1974.
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87
Gunilla Winsnes, “Nu ska han visa hur människan påverkas av alla miljögifter,” Stockholms-Kuriren, March 30, 1977.
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93
Martin Lister, “Photography in the Age of Electronic Imaging,” in Photography: A Critical Introduction, edited by Liz Wells, 4th ed. (London: Routledge, 2009).
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Colouring the Human Landscapes
Lennart Nilsson and the Spectacular World of Scanning Electron Micrographs
In: NunciusThis article explores the relationship between Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson’s scanning electron micrographs and commercial culture from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. By retracing how Nilsson’s micrographs of the internal structures of the human body were made, circulated, and received, its aim is to investigate three aspects of this relationship. First, it highlights how the complex and sometimes conflicting interplay between the photographer and various actors in science, industry and the media shaped the pictures and their trajectories. Second, it analyses the processes used to colour Nilsson’s original black-and-white micrographs in relation to tendencies in the media and the advertising industry during this period. Third, it examines what motivated Nilsson and his collaborators in their use of colour and also the critical debates concerning the spectacular and commercial qualities of his pictures. In the concluding section, the implications of this analysis for the history of the objectivity of scientific images is discussed.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 439 | 48 | 2 |
| Full Text Views | 126 | 5 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 54 | 15 | 0 |