The Brown Sisters series by Nicholas Nixon is on display at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam right now. I headed south and cross the Erasmusbrug to check it.

Probalby the four sisters are a force of nature, four women of conviction. Nixon might have been so totally amazed by them (he is actually married to the older one) that he decided to take a black-and-white portrait of them each year in the summer, starting in 1975. The pictures focus on their faces and on each one they line up in the same order left to right: Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie. And it goes on till 2009.

It’s true you can’t tell what’s their stories from the pictures. But it’s also true that in some pictures they are smiling more than in others, they change the style of their clothes and hair.There is of course a background. But the most overwhelming is how you witness time passing and how it severely brings change to their faces and bodies. Seeing the whole collection there seemed to me a bit like when I read Wharthon’s Age of Innocence, where she ruthlessly crushes you with the fact that there are too many things beyond what you can control. And the biggest of all are time and perishability.