Nicholas Nixon. The Brown sisters (1975-2022)

Nicholas Nixon (Detroit, 1947), a key figure in contemporary photography, is recognized both for his work and for his teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art until 2017. The Brown Sisters (1975-2022), the protagonist of this exhibition, is one of the references of modern photographic portraiture. The series brings together the annual portraits that Nixon took of his wife Beverly Brown (Bebe) and her three sisters – Heather, Mimi and Laurie – since 1975, always in the same order, facing the camera, with natural light and using a large-format camera.

Far from any artifice, The Brown Sisters (1975-2022) reveals, in its reiteration, the pulse of time: aging, emotional transformations and the permanence of family ties. Through a constant structure and a deeply empathetic gaze, Nixon constructs a visual narrative about intimacy and emotional ties. Each image, shot with a rigorous and sober technique, acts as a cut in the continuity of life, showing both the traces of experience and the emotional evolution of its protagonists. The formal simplicity of the images contrasts with the emotional strength of the project as a whole: an intense aesthetic experience that transcends the personal to offer us one of the most moving representations of the passage of time in the history of art.

This work, acquired by the Foundation in 2007, marked the beginning of Fundación MAPFRE’s photography collections. With the image of the year 2022 Nixon concluded the series, so this will be the first time it can be seen in Spain in its definitive version.

Curator: Carlos Gollonet (Chief Curator of Photography at Fundación MAPFRE).