Each page a lovely glimpse of ‘Life’

When Lennart Nilsson first published his unprecedented photographs of living embryos in Life magazine in 1965, they caused a worldwide sensation. Eight million copies of the issue were sold in just a few days, and the public’s eyes were opened to the beauty of an inner world previously unreachable.

That tradition continues with Nilsson’s latest book of stunning microphotography, titled simply, “Life.”

The journey starts, fittingly, inside the womb. Amazingly detailed, artfully colored enlargements of eggs and sperm attach, divide, and little by little give way to fully formed embryos. They resemble space aliens floating in an endless void, but they are unmistakably, beautifully human — models of miniaturization down to transparent wisps of hair and the fingernails on a tiny hand.

The second section of the book continues beyond birth, exploring even more intimately the materials that make up our bodies. A close-up of the macula of the eye brings to mind a mountainous vista like a vacation photograph; a section of bone marrow looks exactly like a garden of faded pink roses.

Other pictures are more abstract, fields of delicate textures perfect for playing the game of “What could this be?” and often surprising the reader with the answers.

Eloquent and mesmerizing, these astonishing photographs give us a glimpse into a haunting and mysterious world. Comparisons to space imagery are unavoidable among staring eyes glinting like planetary sunrises and fingertips like lunar landscapes. But this world is not remote and removed; it is immediate and vibrant, all around us yet unseen, and a tribute to the complexity in even the most mundane parts of ourselves.