The Brown Sisters, Brookline, Massachusetts 2020

Nicholas Nixon made this photograph of four sisters in Brookline, Massachusetts. Looking at it, I get this quiet feeling, a meditation on time. Nixon’s known for taking a photograph of these same four sisters every year since 1975. It's like he's saying, "Hey, let's just watch what happens." Year after year he returns to the same subject—his wife and her three sisters. I wonder what he was thinking when he started this project? Did he know that by repeating the same image, a new kind of portrait would emerge? I love that the consistency of the setup—black and white, similar framing, and the order in which the sisters appear—reveals the subtle shifts of aging, but also the enduring bonds between them. It’s beautiful to see the sisters evolve through time, together. It reminds me of On Kawara’s date paintings, where repetition becomes its own form of expression. Artists are always having conversations with each other, I think, across time and space.