Artist Statement
For over two decades as a clinical embryologist at NYU Langone, Alexis Adler worked at the threshold of life — guiding human embryos through their first divisions under a microscope. These images are what she saw.
Rendered as large-format fine-art prints, the Early Humans series transforms clinical documentation into something more essential: proof of existence at its most elemental. Each image captures a stage of development invisible to the naked eye — a two-cell embryo at 28 hours, a blastocyst on day five, the moment of hatching. They are scientific records and they are portraits. Adler has said: "these are the earliest humans anyone has ever photographed."