The Brown Sisters presents a photographic project as compelling in effect as it is simple in conception: four women, 25 years. Each year since 1975 photographer Nicholas Nixon has made a group portrait of his wife and her three sisters facing the camera in the same order: Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie. The series now measures a quarter century in the lives of the sisters, who in 1975 ranged in age from 15 to 25; each picture is dense with allusions to the year of experience that separates it from the one before.

Der amerikanische Fotograf Nicholas Nixon ist für seine großformatigen Schwarz-Weiß-Fotografien bekannt, in denen er eine besondere Verbindung zu den Betrachtenden herstellt und sie an intimen Momenten im Leben teilhaben lässt. Für seine wohl ikonischste Serie, The Brown Sisters, begleitete er vier Schwestern über 46 Jahre hinweg. Seine Praxis umfasst jedoch ein viel breiteres Spektrum, etwa das einfache Leben im Süden der USA oder Landschaftsporträts der rohen industriellen Gegenden rund um Detroit. Ausgehend vom Aspekt der Intimität gibt die Monografie einen erstmaligen Überblick über Nixons Œuvre. Sie ist eine Reise durch das Leben und Werk des Künstlers – einerseits aus der Ferne, andererseits intim und nah – und zeigt auch neue, bislang unveröffentlichte Fotografien.

In August of 1974, the photographer Nicholas Nixon made a group portrait of his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters, Heather, Mimi and Laurie the Brown sisters. He did not keep that image, but in 1975 he made another portrait of the four, who then ranged in age from 15 to 25. Working with an 8x10-inch view camera, whose large negatives capture a wealth of detail and a luscious continuity of tone, Nixon did the same in 1976, and this second successful photograph prompted him to suggest to the sisters that they assemble for a portrait every year. The women agreed, and have gathered for an annual portrait ever since. Nicholas Nixon: 40 Years of The Brown Sisters celebrates the fortiethanniversary of the series in 2014, featuring luminous tri-tone reproductions of all forty portraits, and a new afterword by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister, which examines the series public exhibitions, critical reception, and cult following. Like the previous editions of the series, published by The Museum of Modern Art in 1999 and 2008 for the twenty-fifth and thirtythird anniversaries of the series, and both out of print, Nicholas Nixon: 40 Years of The Brown Sisters is an important chapter in an ongoing project that we hope will continue for many years more.

This extraordinary book is about fifteen people with AIDS. It is about bravery and cowardice, honesty and self-deception, humor and bitterness. It is about patience with the banality of this world, and aboutt the rage that accrues as time slips away.

Nicholas Nixon is known for the ease and intimacy of his large format photography. He has photographed porch life in the rural South, the changing Boston cityscape, sick and dying people, the intimacy of couples, and an ongoing annual portrait of his wife Bebe and her three sisters, beginning in 1975. Included in the seminal 1975 exhibition "New Topographics", Nixon is major figure in American photography of the latter half of the twentieth century. In Close Far, Nixon presents a dichotomous group of photos made with his signature large-format view camera, in this case one with an 11x14 inch negative. The first half of the book contains self-portraits, comprising in Nixon's words "sketches of an old man". Filled with anxiety, longing and contentedness, these images chronicle the shapes, slopes and pores of Nixon's face. The second half of the book shows views of buildings in the densest part of Boston. Made from high within the buildings and with the same camera, these images without horizons do not gaze down upon but rather "through" the city. With the lens in the same orientation as his self-portrait photos, Nixon's results are remarkable for their richness of detail and complexity of form.

American photographer Nicholas Nixon (born 1947) is best known for The Brown Sisters, his ongoing series of annual portraits of his wife Bebe and her three sisters (recently exhibited and published by The Museum of Modern Art). But Nixon's wider oeuvre has been less well documented. Long overdue, Nicholas Nixon: About Forty Years will be the first publication to focus on the broader swath of Nixon's more than 40-year career. In a published statement about photography written in 1975, Nixon remarked, The world is infinitely more interesting than any of my opinions about it. To present the world as he sees it--in fascinating, precise and often startling detail--Nixon has consistently used unwieldy large-format cameras, with negatives measuring 8 x 10 inches or 11 x 14 inches. His recurring subjects--cities seen from above, people on their porches, landscapes, portraits of the very young and the very old--are woven together throughout his career like the cords of a cable. Nixon's large-format black-and-white photography is simultaneously intimate, technically precise and somehow relaxed. Beautifully designed and with exquisitely reproduced images, About Forty Years presents the most thorough view yet of this important artist's career.