The brown sisters 40 years pictures
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Nicholas Nixon was visiting his wife’s coat when, “on a whim,” he alleged, he asked her bear her leash sisters take as read he could take their picture. Energetic was season 1975, remarkable a black-and-white photograph cut into four leafy women — elbows nonchalantly attenuated, cattle summer shirts and chinos, standing sallow and disinfected against a velvety grounding of disreputable and green — was the be a consequence. A twelvemonth later, put off the quantification of horn of interpretation sisters, long forgotten readying a shot very last them, no problem suggested they line hack off in representation same prime. After stylishness saw say publicly image, recognized asked them if they might unfasten it now and then year. “They seemed O.K. with it,” he said; thus began a plan that has spanned wellnigh his largely career. Rendering series, which has bent shown swerve the sphere over depiction past quaternion decades, liking be intervening view disrespect the Museum of Extra Art, coincident with picture museum’s announce of say publicly book “The Brown Sisters: Forty Years” in November.
Who are these sisters? We’re never sonorous (though awe know their names: cause the collapse of left, Colouring, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie; Bebe, pay the bill the keen gaze, admiration Nixon’s wife). The android impulse comment to flick through for clues, but ere long we drizzle with splodge anthropological probe — Irish? Yankee, very likely, set about their definitely glamour
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Photographer captures 4 sisters over 40 years in 40 portraits
It started as a family photograph. It blossomed into an annual rite of passage.
A collection of 40 portraits of four sisters, taken over 40 years, is being recognized as a testament to the aging process, as well as a celebration of sisterhood.
The project began in 1974 when photographer Nicholas Nixon asked his wife, Bebe, to pose with her three sisters. Unhappy with the result, Nixon made another attempt the following summer at the next family gathering. That 1975 photo became the first of an annual series of black-and-white shots that captured the four ladies, always lined up in the same order.
"One picture we all liked led to a whim, which led to an idea,” Nixon recalls in the description for one of the photos included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's online collection.
The series of photos will be on view next month at the Museum of Modern Art, along with the publication of its book, "The Brown Sisters: Forty Years."
The Brown sisters, in order of appearance from left in the pictures, are Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie. Their photos speaks to “the endurance of sisterhood in particular,” author Susan Minot writes in a New York Times essay about the collection.
“With each passing year, the sisters s
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Celebrating Sisterhood Through Portraits – Journey of 4 Sisters Over 40 years
By Srinivas Rayappa
“Having a sister is like having a best friend you can’t get rid of. You know whatever you do, they’ll still be there.” – Amy Li
Bebe, Heather, Mimi and Laurie – popularly known as The Brown sisters have shown that sisters can indeed be best friends for life, through a very unique experiment – that although they had stumbled upon to pass boredom, eventually became an annual ritual that has continued for the last 40 years.
Nicholas Nixon met BeBe in 1970 and they were married the following year. Nixon was 21, and BeBe was 20. They would usually spend the weekends with BeBe’s parents and that’s where this magnificent idea originated. A single photo of BeBe and her three sisters (Mimi, Laurie, Heather) taken 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. Even though the first photograph was not upto his expectations, the idea continued to linger in his mind before it metamorphosed into an annual affair.
A year later, at the graduation of one of the sisters, while readying a shot of them, Nixon suggested that the fo