American photographer Nicholas Nixon (born 1947) is best known for The Brown Sisters, his ongoing series of annual portraits of his wife Bebe and her three sisters (recently exhibited and published by The Museum of Modern Art). But Nixon's wider oeuvre has been less well documented. Long overdue, Nicholas Nixon: About Forty Years will be the first publication to focus on the broader swath of Nixon's more than 40-year career.
In a published statement about photography written in 1975, Nixon remarked, "The world is infinitely more interesting than any of my opinions about it." To present the world as he sees it--in fascinating, precise and often startling detail--Nixon has consistently used unwieldy large-format cameras, with negatives measuring 8 x 10 inches or 11 x 14 inches. His recurring subjects--cities seen from above, people on their porches, landscapes, portraits of the very young and the very old--are woven together throughout his career like the cords of a cable. Nixon's large-format black-and-white photography is simultaneously intimate, technically precise and somehow relaxed. Beautifully designed and with exquisitely reproduced images, About Forty Years presents the most thorough view yet of this important artist's career.