The Brown Sisters, New Canaan, Connecticut 1975

This gelatin silver print, "The Brown Sisters, New Canaan, Connecticut," was created by Nicholas Nixon. The composition is striking in its simplicity: four sisters standing shoulder to shoulder against a backdrop of blurred foliage. The grayscale flattens the image, emphasizing the lines and forms of their faces and clothing. Nixon’s formal approach, maintained across decades of photographing the Brown sisters, becomes a study in seriality. Each portrait uses a consistent structure - the sisters arranged in the same order, facing the camera - transforming time itself into a visible element. The formal rigor allows viewers to observe subtle variations in the sisters’ expressions and appearances, charting the effects of aging and experience. The act of repetition creates a structure, a visual language, that invites us to decode the changing relationships and individual identities within this familial unit. These images prompt questions about time, identity, and the semiotics of family portraiture.