Visual art
Nicholas Nixon
born 1947 · photographer
Detroit-born large-format photographer best known for The Brown Sisters, his annual portrait of his wife and her three sisters since 1975.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan
age 78- Also known as
- Nick Nixon
- Detroit years
- 1947–1969
- Field
- Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Nixon was born in Detroit in 1947 and studied American literature at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, graduating in 1969. While working in an Ann Arbor bookshop he came across a book of Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs, which impressed him so much that he signed up for a summer photography class. He went on to study photography at the University of New Mexico and settled in the Boston area, where he taught for decades at the Massachusetts College of Art. Working with a bulky 8×10-inch view camera, he made intensely detailed black-and-white portraits of city views, families, the elderly and people living with AIDS. His best-known project, The Brown Sisters, is a single group portrait of his wife Bebe and her three sisters, taken every year since 1975, a quiet record of aging that has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art. His 1988 MoMA exhibition Pictures of People traveled to the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Highlights
- BA in American literature, University of Michigan (1969)
- Found photography through a Cartier-Bresson book in an Ann Arbor bookshop
- The Brown Sisters, an annual portrait series since 1975
- His MoMA show Pictures of People traveled to the DIA (1988–89)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1965–1969
University of Michigan
Where he studied American literature and discovered photography.