Forty portraits in forty years gives a rare insight into the ’impact’ of time

The Brown sisters have been photographed every year since 1975. The collection of images provide a rare pictorial insight into the passage of time and its impact on us all. Words by Susan Minot. Pictures by Nicholas Nixon. 

NICHOLAS Nixon was visiting his wife’s family when, “on a whim,” he said, he asked her and her three sisters if he could take their picture. It was summer 1975, and a black-and-white photograph of four young women — elbows casually attenuated, in summer shorts and pants, standing pale and luminous against a velvety background of trees and lawn — was the result.

A year later, at the graduation of one of the sisters, while readying a shot of them, he suggested they line up in the same order. After he saw the image, he asked if they might do it every year. “They seemed OK with it,” he said; thus began a project that has spanned almost his whole career.