Nicholas Nixon is known for the ease and intimacy of his black and white large format photographs. Nixon has photographed porch life in the rural south, schools in and around Boston, cityscapes, sick and dying people, and the intimacy of couples. Recording his subjects close and with meticulous detail, he facilitates an emotional connection between the viewer and the subject.
In 1975, he began The Brown Sisters, an annual portrait series depicting his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters unchangingly posed in the same order. This seminal project, which concluded in 2022, has been the subject of multiple publications and exhibitions.
In 2013, Nixon’s book Close Far was released by Steidl. The body of work explores the self in physical and psychological proximity to the urban landscape. On the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s The Brown Sisters series, in 2014, the complete sequence of images was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and re-published in an anniversary catalogue. In 2017, Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid opened a comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to date, accompanied by a catalogue illustrating over 200 images, and the ICA Boston mounted a chronological retrospective exhibition. In 2021-2022, Galerie Le Château d’Eau in Toulouse mounted an ambitious survey exhibition, accompanied by an expanded catalogue.
Nixon has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and two Guggenheim Fellowships. His work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among many others.
