Forty
Portraits in Forty Years
by
Nicholas Nixon is one of the most impressive, and touching,
documentary projects I've ever come across for it makes me see, and
feel, a reality that I'm rarely aware of. The passing of time, that
is. This series had such a strong impact on me that I've never really
wondered who the photographer was – it was the concept that I
thought brilliant. And, it was the photographed sisters that captured
my attention.
When
glancing through this „comprehensive retrospective“ (as the
promotion leaflet calls the book) I however immediately sensed an
intimacy that many of these pictures radiated – the same (or a
similar) intimacy that can be felt when spending time with the Brown
Sisters. And so I began to wonder who this photographer is. My main
source was Carlos Gollonet's introduction „Nicholas Nixon: The
Pulse of Time“ as well as his interview „A Conversation with
Nicholas Nixon“. And, also to be found in this tome, Sebastian
Smee's „The Clearest Image“.
Nicholas
Nixon (born 1947 in Detroit) studied American and English literature
(his senior thesis was on James Joyce and Ulysses) when he began
photographing. Through Henri Cartier-Bresson he discovered that form
is how the larger meaning is born. „I looked at every one of his
pictures and saw the athletic force of his framing, and understood
that that was what made them better than everyone else's.“
He
was however influenced more by the books that he was reading –
William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Willa Cather,
Flannery O'Connor, Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats – than by
photography. „But I've always loved Atget and Cartier-Bresson the
most; Walker Evans came later ... he is dry, unlike all the others
above ... he used irony, which I had come to distrust.“
It
is an interesting phenomenon: Since I feel deeply touched by Nixon's
photographs I now look at the work of Atget, Cartier-Bresson and
Walker Evans with again different eyes.
For the full review, see http://www.fstopmagazine.com/
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