The Brown Sisters, Cincinnati, Ohio 1981

Curator: This is "The Brown Sisters, Cincinnati, Ohio," a gelatin-silver print by Nicholas Nixon, taken in 1981. Editor: They look formidable. Very serious and intimate. A stark beauty, maybe even melancholy, radiates from this black and white portrait. Curator: It’s part of an ongoing series. Every year since 1975, Nixon has photographed these four sisters. Each photograph is a marker of time, a visual record of aging and the shifting dynamics of familial relationships within a society constantly in flux. Editor: The ritual aspect is interesting – how this simple annual act intersects with the performance of sisterhood, of womanhood, of American identity as such. The uniformity of their poses allows us to hone in on the small variations – shifting expressions, clothing styles, even the evolving quality of the photographic medium itself as a form of representation. It begs to ask: What constitutes identity, and who decides what a "sister" or a "woman" is in contemporary society? Curator: There’s something to be said about Nixon’s position as an outsider too; a man framing a very female narrative. How does the male gaze influence our perception of these women over time? Is he documenting or performing an idea of sisterhood? Editor: Exactly. It complicates the assumed objectivity of photography. Are we simply witnessing a family ritual, or is it a staged narrative subtly reinforcing societal expectations, however subverted? The very act of photographing them annually introduces a performative element. Curator: That tension between candid observation and deliberate construction really captures the nuances of photographic portraiture. It is never just the individual, but their evolving selves against the backdrop of our culture, or how someone like Nixon framed and envisioned it back in 1981. Editor: These annual photographs act almost like an exercise, they allow to address some deeply significant questions about how our appearance is so intrinsically linked with gender, social convention, age, and how we think of ourselves, which can encourage viewers to explore the construction of the self in the wider cultural conversation.