The Brown Sisters: Forty Years

A single photo of BeBe and her three sisters (Mimi, Laurie, Heather) taken by her husband Nicholas Nixon back in the August of 1974 to bide boredom, turned into a long term project for Nixon with the sustained co-operation of the four sisters. It became an annual ritual that has continued for the last 40 years.
The consistency in the order in which the sisters pose for the camera is indeed noticeable – left to right, Heather, Mimi, BeBe and Laurie. Nixon consciously chose to use a 8x10in view camera on a tripod and black-and-white film. It has been that way ever since. The natural light, the simplicity, the casual postures, unfussy preparations and glamour-neutral attitudes are the highlights of all the photographs.
Bebe Nixon in an interview explained the secret behind these simple yet powerful portraits – “We sisters never discussed what we are going to wear. We just wore what we felt like wearing that day.” The series of portraits have been unveiled at Fraenkel Gallery booth at Paris Photo and Museum of Modern Art, New York, coinciding with the museum’s publication of the book “The Brown Sisters: Forty Years”.
Nicholas Nixon, who grew up a single child, has been especially intrigued by the endurance of sisterhood and the deep emotional connect among the sisters which enthused him to pursue this ritual for the last 40 years.
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