Available now from Jacksom Fine Art's Private Collections Salon & Sale, this exceptional group comprises the first fourteen photographs from The Brown Sisters, Nicholas Nixon's best-known body of work. The Brown Sisters began in 1975, when Nicholas Nixon photographed his wife, Bebe Brown Nixon, alongside her three sisters, Heather, Mimi, and Laurie. Each year, Nixon photographed the four women in the same order, always looking directly at the camera. In 1989, a collector acquired what was then the complete set of The Brown Sisters, and Jackson Fine Art is now pleased to offer these early prints.
Over five decades, The Brown Sisters has become one of the landmark projects in the history of photography, transforming a simple family portrait into a profound meditation on time, aging, and family relationships. Because Nicholas Nixon keeps the composition purposely consistent from year to year, the changes become the subject: faces, hairstyles, clothing, posture, and the deepening intimacy between the sisters. Remarkably, Nixon had made only two successful photographs from the series when John Szarkowski, then Director of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, included both in Nixon's 1976 solo exhibition. The significance of The Brown Sisters was recognized almost immediately, for its rare ability to make the passage of time visible.
