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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons--as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vacci≠ uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia--a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo--to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family--past and present--is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family--especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother's cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Published to accompany the exhibition held at Museum fur fotografie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Kunstbibliothek, Berlin, 8 September 2006 - 7 January 2007.

Edited by Christiane Stahl. Essays by Ann Thomas and Ludger Derenthal.

Since 1992, German artist Jürgen Durner (born 1964) has created fantastically disorienting paintings on mirrored panes of glass. Depicting a mélange of architectural elements, these works, with their layered superimpositions, simulate the effect of looking into a window at night. Cast in the sickly glow of neon lights, Durner's works induce thought-provoking distortions of urban life.

Claudia Fährenkemper (geb. 1959 in Castrop-Rauxel, lebt in Steinheim/Westfalen) fotografiert riesengroße und kleinste Objekte unter Zuhilfenahme von Rasterelektronenmikroskopen. Dabei entstehen faszinierende und zugleich befremdliche Fotografien. Im Spiel mit den extremen Maßstäben bilden sich fantastische Bildwelten: amerikanische Wüsten- und Canyonlandschaften, Maschinengiganten des deutschen Braunkohletagebaus, Insekten, Pflanzensamen, Kristalle und Plankton sowie Rüstungen des europäischen und japanischen Kulturerbes. Erstmals werden in diesem aufwendig gestalteten Buch Arbeiten aus vierzig Jahren künstlerischen Schaffens gegenübergestellt. In der Zusammenschau von Fährenkempers wichtigsten konzeptuell angelegten Werkserien zeigen sich überraschende Verzahnungen von Sujets völlig gegensätzlicher Thematik und Dimension aus Natur, Technik, Wissenschaft und Kulturgeschichte.

After the wall between the two German states fell in 1989, Stefan Koppelkamm used this historical moment to photograph building and townscapes in East Germany where time seem to have stood still.

From Louis Comfort Tiffany to Kurt Schwitters: an immersive appreciation of the home as art As locuses of creativity, the homes of artists reflect the intellectual worlds of their creators. Starting with the Villa Stuck in Munich--the aesthetic, conceptual cosmos and life's work of the aristocratic artist Franz von Stuck--this unique volume integrates the artist's house as a category into the international discourse and is the first to assign these buildings the status of major works. About 20 examples bring to life the fascination that these artistic fantasies hold for art lovers, including both existing projects and some which, although they have been lost, were of unique importance in their day and still retain their charisma. Along with paintings, sculptures and photographs, plans and models convey the interrelationship between art and life as well as the harmony of the arts expressed by Richard Wagner's historical concept of the total work of art. Among the houses featured are Sir John Soane's Museum, London; William Morris' Red House, Bexleyheath; Louis Comfort Tiffany's Tiffany House, New York City; Mortimer Menpes' flat, London; the Fernand Khnopff Villa, Brussels; Jacques Majorelle's villa and garden, Marrakesh; Kurt Schwitters' Merzbau, Hanover; and Max Ernst's house, Arizona.