In this world gone selfie-mad, I have the feeling that photographs — the ordinary ones that used to fill family scrapbooks — have lost something special. Everywhere I look are snapshots of friends, family, co-workers and pets, which I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t know how far-reaching an online “like” or “share” can be. The world has turned into one big camera with boundaries like Swiss cheese — plenty of holes in privacy.
If it sounds like I’m discouraged about the future of photography, I was until I came across photographer Nicholas Nixon’s tribute to his wife and sisters-in-law: “The Brown Sisters: Forty Years.” There is something fascinating about observing the passage of time through the faces of others. Every year for 40 years, Nixon took a photo of his wife, Bebe, and her sisters Heather, Mimi and Laurie. The first picture was taken in 1975 at a family gathering. The next year, Nixon took a second photograph with all of the sisters again. According to the book’s afterword, “it was after this second successful picture that the group agreed to gather annually for a portrait and settled on the series’ two constants: the sisters would always appear in the same order … and they would jointly select a single image to represent a given year.”
You might be wondering what’s so unique about these annual portraits. The strength and beauty these four women convey in every image has an amazing effect on the viewer. Perhaps this is because each photograph is in black and white, a medium I find incredibly appealing for its combined ability to elicit nostalgia for simpler times while accentuating details unique to monochromatic images. Or, maybe the collection’s impact results from the sisters’ poses and expressions — strong and stoic in the early images, softer and more vulnerable in the later ones. When I look at this stunning collection, I feel as though the sisters are challenging the camera, daring the lens to reveal their beauty, imperfections, uniqueness.
Some cultures and religions believe that taking a person’s photograph results in the theft of the subject’s soul. But I believe that some photographs — such as the ones included in this week’s book — can actually reveal the spirit within. Again, it could be the medium, or the skill of the photographer, but even within my own family’s albums, a range of amateur photos taken with everything from original box Brownie models to Polaroid instant film cameras to yes, even iPhones, I see not only my family’s past, but also the soul and essence of my ancestors. Nothing is lovelier to me than an early black-and-white photograph of my maternal grandmother: a shy smile on her face, she stands outside wearing a white dress, and at that moment she has her whole life ahead of her. It is this image that forever connects me to the young woman I never knew and to the grandmother I loved and cherished.
