Sir

Your Books and Arts exhibition review “Unnatural causes” (Nature 425, 347; 200310.1038/425347a) described two photographic exhibits at the Tenth International Biennale of Photography in Turin, Italy. These included photographs by the Kiev artist Ilya Chichkan of deformed fetuses that he “borrowed” from mothers living in Kiev during and after Chernobyl. Chichkan removed the fetuses from their jars of formalin, dressed them in jewels and photographed them. The review was accompanied by one of the photos it described.

I understand that Chichkan may have been trying to emphasize the tragedy of Chernobyl. However, I found both the exhibit and your description of it to be gratuitous and tasteless. Rather than seeing a “normal sleeping child”, I saw a tragically deformed fetus, killed by the carelessness of men, and perversely dressed up like a doll. Rather than seeing one of the “sleeping princes of Ukrainian legend” in “anachronistic dignity”, I saw a poor dead child exploited for media sensationalism. Your coverage of this exhibit is what I would expect from a lurid tabloid, not a pre-eminent science journal. In the future, please remember that although many of Nature's readers are biologists, we are also mothers and fathers, with parents' sensibilities.