Nicholas Nixon: The Brown Sisters

A young friend brought this book over to share with me today, and we paged slowly through each one. She had seen the exhibit and felt that the gallery experience is more powerful than the book because you can see all the photographs as you move around the room and you can keep referring back. But I was blown away by these pictures! Is that because I have two sisters? Because I am 63 years old and the seemingly simple photographs triggered many emotions about myself and my relationship with my sisters over the years? The expressions on these women's faces are extraordinary, and yet "ordinary," photograph after photograph. Mr. Nixon is very, very talented. Simply, I loved the book and kept it (with my friend's permission) to share with my husband. My only regret is that it didn't continue for another 9 years to the present! It appears that Mr. Nixon is about 60 years old. I hope he continues photographing the sisters until they are all very old and very gray!

Many of us are called to do this kind of project. Few of us choose to do it because we fear we can't.Several years ago I saw two of the "Brown Sisters" and never forgot them. "I hope he keeps this up, but I doubt he can. Relationships change. People's goals change. People are vain." So I thought until I read the dedication and thanks in the front of this book years later.This work ranks with Stieglitz's accidental portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe. Stieglitz, however, makes you want to know a beautiful and unique woman through his poetic intimatcy. Nixon makes you want to know someone as well as he knows the Brown sisters, perhaps as well as they know each other, through a simple directness that few of us have the courage to see or show to each other.Photography is about time. The Brown Sisters remind us that the value of time is measured by the respect we give each other. This work is direct, primitive and undeniable. It has what Malraux called the sense of inevitability.I suspect that the older you are the more you will get from this portrait. If you are young, yow will remember it it 10, 20, 30 and more years from now.If this book doesn't move you, you are either in denial or you should seek some new line of work that doesn't require you to be alive.

No words can describe the work of this photographer. He is in My humble opinion the greatist photographer of the century. Im honored to have been part of his instruction.