The Brown Sisters

by Peter Galassi (Photographer), Nicholas Nixon

The Brown Sisters presents a photographic project as compelling in effect as it is simple in four women, 25 years. Each year since 1975 photographer Nicholas Nixon has made a group portrait of his wife and her three sisters facing the camera in the same Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie. The series now measures a quarter century in the lives of the sisters, who in 1975 ranged in age from 15 to 25; each picture is dense with allusions to the year of experience that separates it from the one before.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction

64 pages, Hardcover

First published July 15, 2002

Reviews

[Tamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

One portrait of four sisters, every year for 33 years.

This collection, though utterly fascinating in terms of sisterhood and aging and simplicity and the basics of what it is to be human, was a bit too sparse for me. I wanted more commentary. I wanted to know more about the sisters and what was happening in their lives at the time of each portrait. I wanted to know who allies with who and what they do for a living and where they live and who they are.

But Peter Galassi's essay at the end makes a point: We bring worlds of knowledge and feeling to our own snapshots, but the Brown sisters are strangers to us, and we know next to nothing about them. The richness of Nixon's mute allusion to the living of four linked lives arises from the alertness and delicacy of his attention.

I guess.

[Damarindah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simple idea but brilliant result! Nixon portrayed his beloved wife, the eldest of the Brown sisters with her 3 siblings every year. It might started as another ordinary family tradition, but the passion, patience and consistency produced a beautiful collection.

The first book published in 2002, contains 24 years portraits in the same left to right standing poses. Saw in the catalogue he published another one in 2007, I wonder whether it has some more pics. This work is really a treasure for the Brown. Hm, I should started this with my nephews and nieces.

[Adam Thorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now obsolete as he has continued to photograph his wife and her sisters and has published a more recent expanded version, this series is a special one. The same shot taken year after year after year, we get to watch the women age, see their relationships change, all with the kind eye of Nixon's 8x10.