Photographer Nicholas Nixon was visiting his wife’s family in Ireland when nonchalantly he asked her and her three sisters if he could take their picture. It was summer of 1975, and a black-and-white photograph of four young women casually posing in summer shirts and pants 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 Nixon saw the image, he asked them if they might do it every year. “They seemed OK with it,” and thus began a project that has spanned almost his whole career. The series of pictures, which has been shot for the past four decades, is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, along with the museum’s publication of the book The Brown Sisters: Forty Years.
The article on the four sisters—‘Forty Portraits in Forty Years’ (1975 to 2014)—appeared in The New York Times recently, catching the attention of readers worldwide. Why so many peoples’ attention was drawn? Why the four sisters do this?
Because Time is all Powerful! And everyone is attracted to Power. Power is one of the opulences of the all-attractive God along with beauty, fame, knowledge, wealth and renunciation. People get attracted to personalities like Bruce Lee, Mohammed Ali, Arnold Schwarzenegger, et al due to their raw power although that power has limitations. Time, which is an external manifestation of God’s form, is all powerful.
The Lord in Bhagavad Gita 11.32 states kälo 'smi loka-kñaya-kåt pravåddho (Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds). So, why shouldn’t everyone be attracted to the all-powerful time? Time defeated even Bruce Lee, Mohammed Ali, Arnold and many more puissant personalities. In the Vedic texts, Time is compared to a snake because, like the serpent, it devours the prey slowly but surely. Everyone has to bend down to the cogent Time.
The four sisters’ portrait series is a resilient-animated lesson for all of us that no one can escape the effects of Time. When they posed for photograph in 1975, they were so young and beautiful. Their skin was smooth and wrinkle-free, their faces bright with great ardour. Life seemed ever fresh like the fresh leaves of the trees in the background of the photograph. That time they surely wouldn’t have thought of the scene 40 years later. In 2014, they are old and jaded; skin is full of wrinkles. Faces bear the onslaught of Time. It’s a daunting picture of the naked reality of life. And please don’t think, “Poor sisters, they are undergoing blight!” This plight will confront every one of us. Those who are reading this article, and those who aren’t!
Young and beautiful Siddhartha was a prince. His father, the ruling king, didn’t want his son to know the real problems of life—birth, old age, disease and death. Hence, he kept him within the compound walls of the palace where everyone was young, beautiful, contented and salubrious. But once Siddhartha ventured out, the scene outside mellowed him. There were old, ugly, diseased people and he saw dead bodies being taken in procession for final rites. Actually then began his search for real life. Later, he renounced the world and attained enlightenment under a Bodhi tree. Hence, he was known as Buddha—one who is completely enlightened.
But everyone cannot renounce the world. One may stay in this world without renouncing it but one has to renounce the comprehension that I am the master. Everyone is unremittingly the servant of God. If one understands this, he can be in this world but not of this world. One should be like the lotus, which grows in muddy waters but is unaffected by it. If one serves God and His parts and parcels with such an attitude, one can go beyond Time. Time cannot apprehend the servant who is serving God. In SB 2.3.17, it is stated that Sun decreases the life span of everyone each day except for a devotee who is serving the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Another thing we observe from the four sisters’ story is that we are changing body continuously. Modern biologists say every seven years we change all the cells of the body. It is conspicuous from the 40 photographs that the sisters have changed their bodies over a period of time. But the most amazing thing is that they still feel that they are the same persons! We also feel we are the same although our childhood body appears different than the bodies in our youth or old age. This is because the soul has remained unfazed throughout.
We are spirit souls and not ephemeral material bodies. After giving up this body, we will get another as per our mental state. If we give up the present material body thinking of God, we go to His kingdom where there is no effect of time—no birth, no death, no disease and no old age. So climactically, to conquer Time we have to take shelter of a person who is controller of Time—Supreme Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna.
( The author is a Spiritual Guru at International Society for Krishna Consciousness )