The Brown Sisters, Truro, Massachusetts 2016

Curator: So here we have "The Brown Sisters, Truro, Massachusetts," a photograph by Nicholas Nixon, taken in 2016. Editor: What a striking portrait! It feels like a study in light and shadow. The monochrome tones really amplify the details, the lines in their faces, the textures of their skin... it’s immediately arresting, almost austere. Curator: Indeed. It’s one in an ongoing series Nixon began in 1975, photographing his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters every year. Each image a meditation on time, aging, and the bonds of family. It's all done with a large format camera, gelatin-silver prints, the whole analog shebang. Editor: Knowing it’s gelatin silver adds a certain layer of meaning. It’s an older, slower process—perfect for the subject matter. Think of the labor that goes into that, each print a deliberate act. I’m interested in that repetition, that annual ritual, year in, year out. There's such powerful conceptual grounding. Are the materials archival quality? Curator: Oh absolutely. Meant to last beyond our lifetimes, echoing perhaps the enduring strength Nixon saw in the sisters' relationship. There's such tenderness in some of them. Look how they lean on each other, physically supporting one another, but this specific image almost feels…bleak? I feel like a voyeur gazing into their souls Editor: I don’t necessarily read it as bleak. Melancholy, perhaps. I see their strength, too. The material reality of aging can be raw, unforgiving. The tight composition forces you to confront that reality head-on, you know. Like facing one's own mortality in a mirror. Curator: I can see that. Perhaps the power lies in that uncomfortable truth. The unrelenting gaze back at the viewer. You almost want to reach out and comfort them, or turn away out of respect for their privacy. It also occurs to me, though...we're also participants in that exchange between viewer and viewed...so are we, the audience also complicit with that voyeuristic dynamic that maybe implicates us, too? I can see now that the image isn't so austere...it also leaves itself vulnerably open to different kinds of narratives and projection...almost an existential Rorschach of sorts! Editor: Right, like how a well-handled photographic print holds so much material information—silver particles, chemical processes—but can simultaneously unlock immaterial ideas like grief or empathy. So, each photograph documents these sisters over time, but maybe, inadvertently, we are being recorded, as viewers, through them as well. Curator: Nicely put. It's a beautiful and profound reflection of familial love. It's a potent and beautiful observation of human time and change.