Forty Portraits Of Sisters Over Forty Years

The deepening of the sisters’ relationships extends to the one with Nixon. Each sister has always had the opportunity to weigh in on the annual selection of which shot would represent that year, but in the past 10 years, the process has become much more collaborative. Once, when the sisters were unanimous in a choice that wasn’t the same as Nixon’s, he bowed to their wish. “I have to be fair here,” he said. When his own shadow first appears, falling across the faces — in ’81, ’83 and ’84 — alongside the square of his 8-by-10 camera, you can feel him angling to join in, to be part of the group himself. But in later years, the collaborative bond between him and his subjects shows. The women’s eyes now seem to regard the photographer with a glow of trust and sisterly affection. “We’ve gotten close,” Nixon acknowledges.

As we come to the last pictures, we feel the final inevitability that, as Nixon says, “Everyone won’t be here forever.” The implication hovers in the darkening of the palette and in the figures drawing together, huddling as if to stay afloat. To watch a person change over time can trick us into thinking we share an intimacy, and yet somehow we don’t believe that these poses and expressions are the final reflection of the Brown sisters. The sisters allow us to observe them, but we are not allowed in. The reluctance shows particularly in the early pictures: the wary lowered brow, the pressed line of a mouth. Sometimes a body’s stance or the angle of the jaw is downright grudging. These subjects are not after attention, a rare quality in this age when everyone is not only a photographer but often his own favorite subject. In this, Nixon has pulled off a paradox: The creation of photographs in which privacy is also the subject. The sisters’ privacy has remained of utmost concern to the artist, and it shows in the work. Year after year, up to the last stunning shot with its triumphant shadowy mood, their faces and stances say, Yes, we will give you our image, but nothing else.