Customer Reviews

The Brown Sisters (Museum of Modern Art Books)

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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.

Nicholas Nixon's continuing series of annual portraits of the four Brown sisters started in the early 70's. "Nicholas Nixon: The Brown Sisters. Thirty-Three Years" collects the portraits up to 2008, a total of 33 years, in a beautifully bound and printed volume, with good surrounding information in the introduction and appendices.

The format of the works is simple: the same 4 women, in the same left-to-right order, shot with an 8x10 view camera. Some of the portraits are splendid, some less so, but it's not the individual isolated images that make this collection so moving.

We know next to nothing about them and their lives beyond the flimsiest of biographical details. We know that they are sisters, we know their relative ages, and we know that the photographer is married to one of them. Everything beyond that is speculation except for one other thing: we share with them the most powerful story of all - the chronological unfolding of human lives. "Capturing the moment" has been one of the enduring themes through the history of photography, co-existing with and exploiting the powerful human urge to fill in the story surrounding snapshot images. The Brown Sisters has, over time, emerged as a very special work of art because the arc of its narrative is so long, and it engages us in a way that we can't avoid. You can see this in action anywhere that the collection is displayed (such as the MOMA in New York). At first a person might look at the images with the eye of the voyueur, scraping for more information: Is this one pregnant? Is that one looking ill? But eventually we stand back and see the irreducible story of human aging, shared with us in poignant and generous and courageous glimpses.

All art carries the challenge of rising above the banality of its own construction: what makes a Warhol painting more than pigment on a canvas, or a Hockney drawing more than marks on paper? A work like The Brown Sisters is so simple in its conception that it's easy to dismiss it as not art at all, or perhaps art by accident. So buyer beware: you might look at these images and see nothing more than family snapshots - albeit by a family lucky enough to have a professional photographer of great skill in its midst. You might, on the other hand, see something very different: the most important story of all, the story of every one of us, told with humility and simplicity and love.

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!

Everything I expect a photographybook to be ! It was in a perfect state. I saw the prints on an exhibtion and just had to have the book. It shows that getting older can be beautiful.

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.

This is interesting but other than the timespan not that moving. Good for Nick Nixon that he uses a 8X10 view camera. So what? Good for the Brown sisters that, over time, their relationship with each other changes. I hope it contunues to follow a happy and loving course. The book is a real snooze though. Sorry gang, I left this one on the MOMA bookshelf and suggest you do the same.