The brown sisters 40 years of photographs
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In July of , Nicholas Nixon took his first photograph of his wife, Bebe (née Brown), and her three sisters, Heather, Mimi, and Laurie. At the time, Bebe was twenty-five, and the others were twenty-three, fifteen, and twenty-one, respectively. Nixon has taken a photo of the Brown sisters every year since, and the images have accumulated into one of photography’s most affecting bodies of work. In this year’s portrait, Nixon’s forty-third, the sisters are sixty-eight, sixty-six, fifty-eight, and sixty-four, yet the tenor and the particular formal characteristics of the photographs have barely changed in four decades. Facing forward and sequenced exactly as she was every time before, each sister addresses the camera with deliberate scrutiny. The captions for these works include just the year and the location—in this case, Truro, Massachusetts—leaving the viewer only the women’s expressions and bodies with which to speculate about the details of their identities,
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This exhibition occurred in the past. The archival exhibition summary below describes the exhibition as it was conceived while on view.
Since , the American Nicholas Nixon has been photographing his wife Beverly Brown (Bebe) and her three sisters at annual family get-togethers. What began as a record of family life when the subjects were in their twenties has evolved into one of the most compelling series in contemporary photography. This exhibition commemorates the 40th anniversary of this project, known as The Brown Sisters. All 40 black and white prints—one print from each year—will circle Gallery , providing a stunning meditation on familial relationships, aging, and the passage of time.
With this series, Nixon has transformed the conventional family portrait into something both strikingly intimate and resonantly universal. The viewer is drawn into a powerful sense of engagement with the subjects who are consistently close to Nixon&#;s lens, often filling the frame w
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40 Years and 40 Portraits: Photographer Captures the Lives of the Brown Sisters
When photographer Nicholas Nixon asked his wife and her three sisters to pose for a family portrait in , no one expected it to become the project of a lifetime. Unhappy with the initial image, he attempted to recreate the photo the following year, and thus began a year-long photo series capturing the four sisters’ journey through time. Nixon describes the Brown Sisters photographs as an “annual rite of passage” that at once documents aging, the passing of time, and the unique ties of sisterhood.
All the portraits are in black and white, with the sisters standing in the same order. However, the photos are far from monotonous. Through time, the sisters change: you see the women aging, of course, but viewers can also witness subtle changes in the sisters’ demeanor and affection toward each other.
Our favorite aspect of this series fryst vatten seeing the sisters ev