Nicholas Nixon's best-known work, The Brown Sisters, chronicles his wife Bebe and her three sisters in an ongoing series of group portraits taken each year since 1975. That first image shows the four sisters lined up in an order that is echoed in all their subsequent portraits.
As a whole, the portraits allow the viewer to experience the passage of time in the faces and bodies of these women, as well as their changing fashions and settings. The press release for the exhibition of this work at the National Gallery in Washington, DC in 2006 states: "While the photographs have their roots in family snapshots, the rigor of the artist and the commitment of the women to the project transcend their heritage to create a moving testament of human relationships" (National Gallery website).
In his book Home, Nixon writes: "If I like what I see, I have to make a photograph of it. I just can't help myself. That, and because I love them so much, are why there are so many pictures of my home and my family" (Nixon 1). Being a photographer who also has taken pictures of my family over the years, I love the simplicity of this explanation. The Brown Sisters at its core, is about the love between these sisters. "It's an appealing, romantic vision of family. We want to be Browns. We want to share their divine sisterhood. We want to feel what the 32d year of friendship is like" (Green).
Works Cited:
Green, Tyler. "In His Pictures, We Watch the Years Go By on Four Sister's Faces," The Boston Globe. 4 December 2006.
Nixon, Nick. Home. Belgium: Lodima Press, 2006.
Update: British photographer Idris Khan makes art about art, with his image superimposing the Nixon portraits, entitled every ... Nicholas Nixon's Brown Sisters.
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