The Brown Sisters, Wellesley College, Massachusetts 2006

Nicholas Nixon made The Brown Sisters at Wellesley College in Massachusetts using photography. The sisters huddle together in this black and white image and stare out at us, waiting. I'm thinking about their skin, the way it is mapped and marked, the delicate lines that trace their lives. I feel for Nixon as he shoots; is it easy to photograph your wife and her sisters for so many years? I imagine him trying to capture the essence of aging, of time unfolding—the sisters aging but also the relationships between them. Look at the texture, the slight graininess of the photograph and the composition, how they almost merge into one form in the center, only to branch away at the sides. The greyscale helps us focus on light and shadow—a kind of drawing with light. These portraits have a quiet intensity, like the work of photographers such as Diane Arbus, another artist that captured raw emotion. It’s almost like a conversation between these photographers across time, each inspiring the other to explore the depths of human experience.