Forty Portraits in Forty Years

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/03/magazine/01-brown-sisters-forty-years.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=1

Photographs by NICHOLAS NIXON

The Brown sisters have been photographed every year since 1975. The latest image in the series is published here for the first time.

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1975, New Canaan, Conn.

Text by SUSAN MINOT

OCTOBER 3, 2014

Nicholas Nixon was visiting his wife’s family when, “on a whim,” he said, he asked her and her three sisters if he could take their picture. It was summer 1975, and a black-and-white photograph of four young women — elbows casually attenuated, in summer shirts and pants, standing pale and luminous against a velvety background of trees and lawn — was the result. A year later, at the graduation of one of the sisters, while readying a shot of them, he suggested they line up in the same order. After he saw the image, he asked them if they might do it every year. “They seemed O.K. with it,” he said; thus began a project that has spanned almost his whole career. The series, which has been shown around the world over the past four decades, will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, coinciding with the museum’s publication of the book “The Brown Sisters: Forty Years” in November.

Who are these sisters? We’re never told (though we know their names: from left, Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie; Bebe, of the penetrating gaze, is Nixon’s wife). The human impulse is to look for clues, but soon we dispense with our anthropological scrutiny — Irish? Yankee, quite likely, with their decidedly glamour-neutral attitudes — and our curiosity becomes piqued instead by their undaunted stares. All four sisters almost always look directly at the camera, as if to make contact, even if their gazes are guarded or restrained.

1975, New Canaan, Conn.

1976, Hartford 

1977, Cambridge, Mass. 

1978, Harwich Port, Mass.

1979, Marblehead, Mass.

1980, East Greenwich, R.I. 

1981, Cincinnati 

1982, Ipswich, Mass.

1983, Allston, Mass.

1984, Truro, Mass.

1985, Allston, Mass. 

1986, Cambridge, Mass.

1987, Chatham, Mass. 

1988, Wellesley, Mass.

1989, Cambridge, Mass.

1990, Woodstock, Vt.

1991, Watertown, Mass.

1992, Concord, Mass. 

1993, Boston

1994, Grantham, N.H.

1995, Marblehead, Mass.

1996, Lexington, Mass.

1997, Wellesley Hills, Mass.

1998, Falmouth, Mass.

1999, Brookline, Mass.

2000, Eastham, Mass. 

2001, Brewster, Mass.

2002, Marblehead, Mass.

2003, Ipswich, Mass.

2004, Cataumet, Mass. 

2005, Cataumet, Mass.

2006, Wellesley, Mass.

2007, Cataumet, Mass.

2008, Dallas

2009, Truro, Mass. 

2010, Truro, Mass.

2011, Truro, Mass.

2012, Boston

2013, Truro, Mass.

2014, Wellfleet, Mass.

Whenever a woman is photographed, the issue of her vanity is inevitably raised, but Nixon has finessed this with his choice of natural light, casual manner and unfussy preparation. The sisters never discuss what they are going to wear. Bebe Nixon says simply: “We just wear what we feel like wearing that day.”

Throughout this series, we watch these women age, undergoing life’s most humbling experience. While many of us can, when pressed, name things we are grateful to Time for bestowing upon us, the lines bracketing our mouths and the loosening of our skin are not among them. So while a part of the spirit sinks at the slow appearance of these women’s jowls, another part is lifted: They are not undone by it. We detect more sorrow, perhaps, in the eyes, more weight in the once-fresh brows. But the more we study the images, the more we see that aging does not define these women. Even as the images tell us, in no uncertain terms, that this is what it looks like to grow old, this is the irrefutable truth, we also learn: This is what endurance looks like.

It is the endurance of sisterhood in particular. Nixon, who grew up a single child, says he has always been particularly intrigued by the sisterly unit, and it shows in these images. With each passing year, the sisters seem to present more of a united front. Earlier assertions of their individuality — the arms folded across the chest, the standing apart — give way to a literal leaning on one another, as if independence is no longer such a concern. We see what goes on between the sisters in their bodies, particularly their limbs. A hand clasps a sister’s waist, arms embrace arms or are slung in casual solidarity over a shoulder. A palm steadies another’s neck, reassuring. The cumulative effect is dizzying and powerful. When 36 prints were exhibited in a gallery in Granada, Spain, viewers openly wept.

1981, Cincinnati

1999, Brookline, Mass.

The deepening of the sisters’ relationships extends to the one with Nixon. Each sister has always had the opportunity to weigh in on the annual selection of which shot would represent that year, but in the past 10 years, the process has become much more collaborative. Once, when the sisters were unanimous in a choice that wasn’t the same as Nixon’s, he bowed to their wish. “I have to be fair here,” he said. When his own shadow first appears, falling across the faces — in ’81, ’83 and ’84 — alongside the square of his 8-by-10 camera, you can feel him angling to join in, to be part of the group himself. But in later years, the collaborative bond between him and his subjects shows. The women’s eyes now seem to regard the photographer with a glow of trust and sisterly affection. “We’ve gotten close,” Nixon acknowledges.

As we come to the last pictures, we feel the final inevitability that, as Nixon says, “Everyone won’t be here forever.” The implication hovers in the darkening of the palette and in the figures drawing together, huddling as if to stay afloat. To watch a person change over time can trick us into thinking we share an intimacy, and yet somehow we don’t believe that these poses and expressions are the final reflection of the Brown sisters. The sisters allow us to observe them, but we are not allowed in. The reluctance shows particularly in the early pictures: the wary lowered brow, the pressed line of a mouth. Sometimes a body’s stance or the angle of the jaw is downright grudging. These subjects are not after attention, a rare quality in this age when everyone is not only a photographer but often his own favorite subject. In this, Nixon has pulled off a paradox: The creation of photographs in which privacy is also the subject. The sisters’ privacy has remained of utmost concern to the artist, and it shows in the work. Year after year, up to the last stunning shot with its triumphant shadowy mood, their faces and stances say, Yes, we will give you our image, but nothing else.

2014, Wellfleet, Mass. The latest portrait in this series, published here for the first time.

Nicholas Nixon is a photographer whose work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, among many others.
Susan Minot is a novelist and short-story writer.

All photographs by Nicholas Nixon/Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York.
Digital design: Rodrigo De Benito Sanz. Photo editor: Joanna Milter.

Bleak future ahead?

Four Horsemen (2012)
Written and Directed by: Ross Ashcroft

This is another independent multiple award-winning documentary that looks at the depressing economic structure that rules the world. It tells us that we are in a mess. Nobody actually knows how the economy works. From the early twentieth century, we have experimented with various models of economies (traditional and neo-conservatives) and political ideologies (right, centre, left, socialism, communism), but nothing seems to work.

The title refers to the biblical 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, which indicates the days of the Last Judgement. They ride on horses of different hues, white, red, black and pale, each representing Conquest, War, Famine (or justice as he seems to carry a scale perhaps to measure grain or mete justice) and Death respectively to open four of the seven seals of God's hand.
Thinkers have postulated that empires only last 10 generations or 250 years. At the end of a falling empire, the ruling tribe would invariably try to indulge in mega projects with the dwindling state coffers and encourage the former glory and greatness of the kingdom. (sounds familiar?)

The 4 horsemen

Any new discovery/empire will start off with noble intentions by the pioneers who would attain conquest. Their affluence and intelligence would reach a zenith before decadence ensue. Decadence would be characterised by an over-bloated indisciplined army. There would be a conspicuous display of wealth and obsession with sex. Debasement of currency is the next step. The public attention is distracted by apparently unimportant indulgences in celebrities of sports or music (or charioteers or gladiators in the Roman Empire) and culinary skills. (hint again?)
If we look carefully, all of the above repeatedly happen prior fall of any empire.

Human beings have always been inconsistent and paradoxical in their actions. On the one hand, they want peace, and on the other, they create new ways to annihilate each other. They sometimes perform the noblest of acts and, at another, banal atrocities! On one side of the society, there is obesity and the other famine.
Greed is the fundamental pillar of a modern economy. There is enough in the world for everybody's need but for everybody's greed.

After the depression in the 30s, there was legislation to separate retail high street banking and investment banking. Under the Reagan-Thatcherian free market, this legislation had been debunked. As a result, banks indulge in gambling, hand out loans like freebies and hold countries at ransom if they fail. As the leaders depend on lobbyists for their political survival, who are dependent on banks, the bankers' failure has to be rescued by public money. In a way, this is socialism for the rich.

This dichotomy has led to many unhappy people in the country. Military interference and 'aid which never reaches the intended recipient' by the superpowers only led to terrorism. Aid only benefit the elite and the foreign companies affiliated with the superpowers.

The neo-conservatives approach to the economy does not care about the environment and have no qualms in their rapacious abuse of nature for individualistic gains, all in the name of progress.
Even though this documentary paints a very nihilistic picture, it also managed to stimulate debates amongst intelligentsia and academicians to suggest a better blueprint to better distribute the world's wealth.

At the same time, there is a perception that the economists themselves do not know what they are talking about. They only tell you what you want to hear without telling the negative aspects involved.

"The fact is most people think that what a bank does, is lend you money that someone else has put in the bank previously.  But what a bank actually does - what a commercial bank does - is to create money, from nothing, and then lend it to you at interest.  If I do that, if I manufacture money in my own home, it's called counterfeiting.  If an accountant creates money out of nothing in the company account, it's called cooking the books.  But if a bank does it, it's perfectly legal.  And, so long as you allow fraud to be legalized, then all kinds of problems are going to pop up in the economic system that you can't do anything about." - excerpted from the video

This is reality...

Gadoh (Malay/ Cantonese, 2009)
So there I was hanging around the booths at a mini literary fest where DVDs of local indie productions were displayed. There was a unremarkable looking guy manning the stall. In the passing, I casually inquired whether he was involved in any of films displayed. To my embarrassment, he replied that he made all of them!
That is the state of local cinema scene. Your artistic brilliance is not appreciated and conversely, you have to market your product despite the obstacles and sacrifices they to endure in the first place.
This is another film not given approval by FINAS who thought that the story of the movie would confuse its viewers. FINAS went as far as to even attempt to stop a private screening!
When I found out that it was banned film, I grabbed one for myself. And an autographed one that too!
The theme of the film is actually nothing new. A secondary school was facing inter-racial disciplinary problems. The students were divided along racial lines, frequently ending in physical fights amongst students.
The teachers were at wits end trying to keep the bad press under wraps. One innovative teacher, Puan Anne, suggested organising a theatre group to bridge the racial divide. She engages an old friend, an renegade, a non conformist, for this purpose.

The main troublemakers are two group of students, one Malay and the other Chinese who cannot stand the sight of each other. Both group have their own reason for hating each other. Basically, they are parroting what they learnt from their elders. That the Malays are lazy, stupid and self centred and the Chinese are heartless lying immigrants who are unclean.
As predicted, any interventions will initially meet resistance. The other teachers themselves are not convinced that such an intervention would work furthermore as the students are involved in more fights.
By and by, the students managed to put up a joint venture modern theatre show where they basically express their own feelings about their insecurities in front of the full view of the Education Officers and media. The performance is not taken lightly by the forces that be. The Education Officer walks out in anger and the Headmaster is not amused.
The students are happy with their performance and the objective of unification is complete but...
What was deemed as offensive in this movie is actually done daily by our leaders through their proxies. What is seen in the movie is actually faced by people on the ground on a daily basis. True, we are constantly reminded that we are different by our leaders. Like a schizophrenic, they spread the word of unity and love in the one sentence and hate in the next!

Gadoh from Pusat KOMAS on Vimeo.

Are we there yet?

From the outset, things were not going as planned. With a bout of diarrhea and loss of precious electrolytes, I experienced stiffness and soreness over the knees and feet. On the race day, the newly replaced Garmin GPS watch went kaput on me and the music pod went on strike. So it was me left to fend for myself. For pacing, it was left to me to run pacing to feel and for auditory stimulation I was made to listen to my body!
Even though the organisers boast of 60,000 participant in this inaugural race in the new Penang Bridge, the starting line had only a thin crowd waiting to be flagged off at 4am. The runners were released in batches all the way from 1.30am to 8am depending on the length of the races and their gender.
Whilst waiting at the starting line, an old friend from KL appeared from nowhere. After the initial cursory, he complained that there was not such of eye candy for him to lay his eyes on. I told him that he was in the wrong category, the veterans. That itself was his motivation to spring forward from the starting line to catch up with the younger category who was flagged off an hour earlier!

pre-run carbo loading.

If the organisers thought that by staggering the release of runners, the congestion would be averted, they were totally wrong. The slower inexperienced runners were all over the place after we had crossed about the 7km mark. They hogging the road, walking in fours across the road practically blocking the road. Some made sudden unannounced 'pit-stops' at their whims and fancies in the middle of path. Many wasted calories were spent on everting clashes with haphazard movements of fellow runners. Perhaps, the instruction manual of the run should also include a little education on running etiquette. Just like how, by default, escalator uses in developed countries stand on the right side to keep the left side free for users who are in a hurry.
Sometimes nonsensical remarks can annoy you. Even as early as 3km into the overzealous cheerleaders would scream "You are almost there' when you have hardly started!
Along the way, I put on my philosophy cap...
That was a time in man's history not very far in our past when the Orientals left technological and engineering feats to the Western civilisation. They had an innate opinion that they were not up to the mark of Western giants when it came to technological wizardry. Over time, with available opportunities, the Orientals have come up to stand shoulder to shoulder at the same playing industrial fields. Just like that, some time ago, many (at least I did) thought that participation in an endurance running race like the Half or Full Marathon was no child's play. Obviously, the taboo seem to have been broken. Many participants, who do not fit my bill of a well prepared runner or with the correct predisposition, were taking the plunge. But, of course, they have to start somewhere. I shudder to think (hopefully I am wrong) that that was the reason for 4 speeding ambulances that interrupted the flow of our run on that humid and still morning!
The three musketeers in our running group completed with decent times. SK came out top of the trio, as usual with a sub-2hr feat. RS did his PB at 2'13" and yours truly at 2'17".
The lay out after the finishing line was much to be desired. The dimly lit grounds with soggy slippery mud devoid of markings to exit the grounds was not type of reception we were expecting after our adrenaline rush.
Slowly we wriggled back to our ordinary lives to do what ordinary do come Monday morning with the memories of an unwinding weekend.

P.S. Another member of the running gang attained the status shared by 1% of the world population - to complete a Full Marathon. RvS completed his inaugural first FM in 5'15".

Sad decline

How Malaysia never reached the World Cup
(Harimau Malaya's 40-year chronicle of failure)
Author: Lucius Maximus

With such a depressing title, as expected, one can only read about heartaches and heartaches of the Malaysian fans over the 4 decades as the administrators of the national football team made more and more promises in vain to bring the national team to the World Cup finals.

We, the children of the 70s had many fond moments, glued to the radio sets visualising in our minds how our national team was then giving a good fight and even defeating many teams which are considered powerhouses of Asian football - e.g. South Korea, Japan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia. If we were lucky, we would have the pleasure of Malaysia pulverising minnows like the Philippines (15-0) and Burma in a padi-field like muddy fields of Stadium Merdeka. In fact, there was an urban legend then that Malaysia had a regular in-house bomoh (shaman) who had a 100% success rate in bringing in the rain. You see, Malaysia fared better in drenched situations.

The author painstakingly researched and re-enacted those nail-biting moments of the glory days of Malaysian football. A time when we were ranked easily as one of the better teams in Asia before FIFA ranking came to fore. In August 1993, we ranked #75 in the FIFA ranking. Today we are #156.

For starters, Indonesia actually partook the 1938 World Cup as Dutch East Indies where they were thrashed by then a superpower of football, Hungary 6-0.

After Malaysia's high achievement of making it the Olympic in 1972 and defeating USA 3-0, their interest to indulge in the World Cup must have started. Never mind that they lost the remaining 2 games and the U.S.A. was a novice then.

With a string of talented and dedicated players, we actually had a crack at high-level football. We had a few memorable games with international teams who were impressed with many of our player, for example, Mokhtar Dahari.

The journey to the coveted final rounds of the World Cup, however, had been by lousy luck, heartaches and horrible management. From 1974 to 2014, we had made 11 unsuccessful attempts in our pursuit to play amongst the best. Each journey pretty much starts and ends in the same way. We would kick up dirt to boast of yet another new attempt with a new foreign coach with an excellent track record and a local assistant which an illustrious career. The team will go on in a lot of pomp and splendour. The first matches would be not so promising but barely scrape through. They would promise of a better show in the next but would end up worse off than the first! They would miss the World Cup and had to contend watching the finals over the telly.

Excuses were aplenty, but the truth would be lousy planning (like training in Frasier's Hill for a game in Dubai, indiscipline, factions amongst players, cronyism, the mismanagement by the F.A.M. officials (from the most vibrant association it had become one of the most amateurish and poorest) and possibly intervention by bookies!

The author went as far as to suggest a few steps to help to improve the state of football in the country.

P.S. I met a F.A.M. official in a social function recently. Engaging in small talks revealed the old dogs are still quite passionate that the board should continue to be led by royal figurines. He alleged that only they had the charisma and potential to lure financial support for its continuity. Lest he forgot that any successful venture would automatically draw positive attention and money would start rolling in like an avalanche!

P.P.S. When you team starts losing to teams which have more killing fields than playing fields (Laos) or get whipped by groups known as whipping boys (Philippines) or countries with more mountains than fields (Nepal), you know you are in trouble. The trouble is you fail to realise than your contemporaries reached the Quarter Finals of World Cup while you have become more amateurish and shoddy. Japan who learnt from Malaysia on how to build a football league has now an enviable association while you struggle with mediocrity and a semiprofessional league comprising overweight stars who are way past their shelf life!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Sex and murder sells

How to get away with murder (2014, Miniseries)

Drawn into another binge-watching. Luckily, this time it just comprise 6 episodes and more to come. It is the latest kid in town that had hit the American idiot box and had got everybody talking.
It is a legal drama akin to Paper Chase which we used to watch in late 70s where keen students try to win their lecturer's fancy.
HTGAWM, at least the 6 episodes I have watched tells about a lecturer who uses the services of her students to solve her legal cases. The students bend over backwards to outdo each other to win a coveted trophy which acts like a free 'get out of jail' card.

Each episode involves different cases but in the background which probably happened in the future, there is an outgoing saga involving the students trying to dispose a dead body. The dead is actually the lecturer's husband who is revealed to be two timing with his student who was killed and a soccer star is accused of killing her.
It only gets more bizarre as the lecturer, Prof Annalise Keating, has her own affair with a policeman.
One of the student is gay and gets his work down by doing sexual favours. Another is in love with his cocaine junkie neighbour who is also involved in the murder of the student.
Bottomline, sex and murder sells.