The Brown sisters have been photographed every year since 1975.

“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. . .  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 them if they might do it every year. Thus began a project that has spanned almost his whole career.” – The New York Times`

The whole series is headed to MOMA, which must be a huge surprise for the four sisters who, judging by their faces, only grudgingly agreed to having their picture taken in 1975. The subsequent pictures aren’t much more joyful. It makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with them. Do they not get along? Do they dislike the brother-in-law taking their picture? Are they being kept from their dinner? Later portraits suggest that they are, in fact, very close, but they seem to be excluding the viewers, even confronting them. “You’re not one of us,” they seem to be saying. I find these photos very off-putting, yet still compelling.