A Child Is Born (book)

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A Child Is Born
OCLC
9585107

A Child Is Born (full title: A Child Is Born: The drama of life before birth in unprecedented photographs. A practical guide for the expectant mother; original Swedish title: Ett barn blir till) is a 1965 photographic book by Swedish

feminist
critique.

Synopsis

The book proceeds along two "tracks": one series of photographs and accompanying text depict the development of the fetus from conception through to birth; the other shows a woman and her partner as her pregnancy progresses. Early images show

ovum; cell division, implantation, and the development of the embryo
are then illustrated. The text accompanying the photographs of the woman supplies some antenatal care advice.

Reception

Sunday Times and in Paris Match.[4] All eight million printed copies of Life containing the images sold out within four days.[5] The book became reportedly the all-time best-selling illustrated book published;[1] its ubiquity led the academic Barbara Duden to deem it and its pictures "part of the mental universe of our time".[6] Images, text, and diagrams from the book have been reproduced in works as diverse as guides to child protection,[7] development science[8] and anatomy textbooks,[9] and pregnancy manuals.[10] It is widely cited as a pregnancy resource in parenting manuals,[11] and the academic Rebecca Kukla has argued that the book was so culturally influential as to have mediated and to some extent determined the way pregnant women understand their own pregnancies.[6] Images from the book were sent into space aboard the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes.[12] The American Library Association regards it, alongside Gray's Anatomy, as a core medical reference work for libraries.[13]

The book was often cited as presenting the first images of a live fetus in utero.[14] In fact, Geraldine Flanagan's The First Nine Months Of Life had in 1962 compiled a similar set of fetal images from medical archives.[15]

The images played an important role in debates about

anti-abortion campaigners who argue that the fetus is a living human, given that many of them depict (surgically or spontaneously) aborted fetuses.[21]

Both the popularity of the images with

feminist critique.[21] Some of these criticisms have addressed the book's language, which often describes the photographs' subjects as "persons" or "babies".[21] Others argue that the focus on the fetus that the book promoted rendered the woman in whose body it was developing invisible and unimportant,[16][21][22] or contributed to an atmosphere in which the woman and the fetus were seen as remote, opposite, and in competition with one another for rights and personhood.[23] Others, though, have described Nilsson's book as placing the story of fetal development firmly within the context of the woman's body and life.[24] Some scholars have sought to deconstruct the techniques used and choices made in the images' production, pointing out for example that lighting magnification is used to give month-old fetuses the appearance of a much more viable six-month-old, and lightening techniques used to replace the fetus's deep red skin tone with a "baby-like" pink or gold tone.[25]

Publishing history

By the first decade of the 21st century the book had reached a fourth edition and been published in 20 countries.[4] A CD version of the book was produced in 1994, rendering the images interactive.[26] How Was I Born?, an adaptation of the book's text for children, featured many of the same images.[27]

References

  1. ^ a b Januszczak, Waldemar (26 February 2006). "What happens next". The Times. Retrieved 26 February 2006.
  2. ^ "A Child is Born: Lennart Nilsson". The Evening Independent. 30 May 1986. p. 39. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  3. ISBN 0-618-25210-X
    .
  4. ^ a b "Pioneering Swede snaps secrets of life and death". Daily Times of Pakistan. 27 October 2003. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  5. ^ a b Goldscheider, Eric (10 August 2003). "Fetal positions". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on November 11, 2004. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  6. ^
    ISBN 0-7425-3358-1
    .
  7. ISBN 81-261-2138-6
    .
  8. ISBN 0-8058-5163-1
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-321-37294-9
    .
  10. ISBN 0-9747853-2-6
    .
  11. ISBN 1-59337-425-9
    .
  12. ^ Diehl, Digby (June 2008). "Lennart Nilsson photography reveals a world turned inside out". The Rotarian: 25.
  13. ISBN 0-8389-0819-5
    . a child is born nilsson.
  14. ^ "Next week". British Journal of Photography. 15 March 2006. Archived from the original on 27 July 2011. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  15. ^
    ISBN 978-0-415-92120-6
    .
  16. ^
    ISBN 0-8014-8161-9
    . nilsson.
  17. ISBN 1-56625-285-7
    . a child is born nilsson.
  18. ISBN 0-520-21533-8
    .
  19. ^ Lazarova, Daniela (24 March 2000). "From the weeklies". Radio Prague. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  20. ^ Nash, J. Madeleine (11 November 2002). "Inside The Womb". Time. Archived from the original on June 29, 2007. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  21. ^
    ISBN 0-8047-2648-5
    . Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  22. ISBN 0-415-01127-2
    . Retrieved 2 October 2009. a child is born nilsson.
  23. ISBN 0-8223-2196-3
    .
  24. ^ S. F. Gilbert. "Images of Embryos Used by Anti-Abortion Activists". DevBio: a companion to Development Biology, 8th edition, by Scott F. Gilbert. Archived from the original on 2009-10-18. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  25. ISBN 978-0-299-16794-3
    .
  26. ISBN 0-415-22091-2
    . Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  27. OCLC 36107278
    .

External links
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