When Lennart Nilsson first showed this to the editors of Life magazine they had to secure independent verification that it was not a fake. Taken in 1965, one of the most striking aspects of this photograph is the way in which todays context causes us to read it initially as a badly photoshopped image. The image also acts as a testement to the level at which imaging and identity are fundamentally interlinked in contemporary society. This image was followed by ultrsound scanning that allows parents to determine the gender of a baby before it is born and
socialise its entrance into the world accordingly. It also has uncanny echos in images of
spacewalks taken by NASA over the following two decades.
