Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of The Brown Sisters
Nov 22, 2014 to Jan 21, 2015
Official Site
In August 1974, Nick Nixon made a photograph of his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters. He wasn’t pleased with the result and discarded the negative. In July 1975 he made one that seemed promising enough to keep. At the time, the Brown sisters were 15 (Mimi), 21 (Laurie), 23 (Heather), and 25 (Bebe). The following June, Laurie Brown graduated from college, and Nick made another picture of the four sisters. It was after this second successful picture that the group agreed to gather annually for a portrait, and settled on the series’ two constants: the sisters would always appear in the same order—from left to right, Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie—and they would jointly agree on a single image to represent a given year. Also significant, and unchanging, is the fact that each portrait is made with an 8 x 10″ view camera on a tripod and is captured on a black-and-white film negative.
[Nicholas Nixon. The Brown Sisters, Wellfleet, Massachusetts. 2014. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Cornelius N. Bliss Memorial Fund © 2014 Nicholas Nixon]
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