Exhibition «Las Hermanas Brown, 1975–2022»

At the height of summer, Madrid pauses to observe how a life unfolds. Or rather, four lives. Fundación Mapfre opens the exhibition «Las Hermanas Brown, 1975–2022» to the public, an exceptional project by photographer Nicholas Nixon, which can be visited at Sala Recoletos until 24 August. The exhibition forms part of PHotoESPAÑA 2025, but it is not just any exhibition: it is a silent conversation with time.

Everything began in 1975 with an apparently simple group portrait. But Nixon repeated the image year after year, never missing a single one. Before his camera, the same four women—his wife Bebe and her sisters—stand in the same order, allowing the passing years to be recorded in their gestures, their looks and their skin. There are no artifices or forced poses: only the truth that time leaves when no one interrupts it.

The complete series, now brought together in Madrid, is much more than a collection of portraits. It is a visual testament to family intimacy, to the beauty found in ageing together and to the power of constancy as an art form. Nixon portrays not only his subjects, but also the trust, vulnerability and invisible threads that bind them. Las Hermanas Brown needs no words to move us. Every image speaks for itself, like an unwritten letter we can all understand. Those who visit will not see only photographs: they will see a life, divided into chapters of photographic paper.