Nicholas Nixon & Mary Ellen Mark

i like Nicholas Nixon for mainly two reasons; first he prefers the older large format camera's, which had already been abandoned by his contemporaries for smaller, more portable camera's. He has his reasons, such as maintaining the integrity of the image, or the ability to use the negative to produce a print, but personally i myself am something of an antiquarian and tend to gravitate towards older things, for the aesthetics besides whatever practical reasons this may serve. Second, i love his "The Brown Sisters" collection. The idea itself is genius, to see the passage of time in a way that we are otherwise completely oblivious to. It's incredible to see the same people change so much, but still remain the same. It makes the passage of time visible and real and tangiable. The gradual transition of the sisters, not to mention the closeness of the sisters is what really makes these art. And the way he took the photos, the poses, the film quality, it all just makes the whole collection classic.

Mary Ellen Mark is a remarkable and a remarkebly talented woman. At the age of nine she began her career with an old box camera, in school she was head cheerleader who could paint and draw and had a wonderful eye for photography. She's recieved several degrees and even worked in film, including the classic and brilliant "Apocolypse now", directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Aside from photographing Anti-war demonstrations during the Vietnam war, she also took pictures of the fringe elements of society, the tired poor, huddled masses of New York, from
the Transvestites to the destitute , prostitutes, they all caught the flash of Mark's lens. "I'm just interested in people on the edges. I feel an affinity for people who haven't had the best breaks in society. What I want to do more than anything is acknowledge their existence". (Uncited but quoted in Long, "Brilliant Careers", Salon)