It isn’t easy to find pictures from Nicholas Nixon’s Family Pictures online. Nixon is well-known for his pictures of AIDS patients, of school children, and for The Brown Sisters, but it seems that his family pictures remain in relative obscurity.
Which is unfortunate. I obtained a copy of this monograph a few months back, and I’m moved by it. These are pictures of his wife, Bebe, and his children Sam and Clementine. The pictures are warm, loving, and funny at times. These are more than portraits; these are scenes from life around the Nixon home when his two children were very young.
Amazingly, Nixon made these photographs with an 8x10 camera. 8x10. I’ve tried making portraits of my son with my 4x5 before, and wasn’t too successful at it. I would expect it to be much more difficult with an 8x10, particularly since these aren’t pictures in which Nixon’s children are posed before the camera. Longer lenses. More bulk. Longer exposures, in all likelihood. And energetic subjects, to say the least. But Nixon knows what he wants. He’s after the beauty of an 8x10 contact print, a sentiment I understand completely.
Somehow Nixon pulls it all off with grace in this charming little publication. Highly recommended for all parents with any interest in photographing their children.
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