Sistermoon by Siri Kaur

Artist Siri Kaur has been photographing her family for over 30 years, and her youngest sister, Simran, is the central focus of ‘Sistermoon’.

‘The passage of time is relentless, never ending, back and forth. The time that passes between us being born and having our own kids isn’t actually that long in the scheme of the universe, just a blink.’

Kaur’s biography informs her work. The book opens with a timeline of photographs from her mother’s traditional family, taken in the 1950s by her grandfather. Kaur herself was born into a cult—one image in the book depicts her parents’ wedding at the Happy Healthy Holy Organization, or 3HO, in 1976. After Kaur's family left the cult, her father established a rural living community in Vermont where her siblings remain today. Kaur simultaneously belonged to the family and was also an outsider. Her relationship with her family, in particular her sister, was formed and strengthened by creating photographs together. Photography enabled her to observe, catalogue, and connect.

“I remember when you were really little and I was a teenager, you would just look at me with complete and utter fascination because I had a woman’s body and you were a kid… I think for me when I was photographing you as a kid and young teenager, I had been through what you were experiencing not that long before. I remembered the feeling of my body growing and changing and I understood what was coming as you morphed from being a little kid into a woman.” — Siri Kaur

The images collectively form a freewheeling narrative with recurring family characters growing and transforming as the pages turn. Kaur’s use of landscape and the close relationship of nature embed a sense of magical spirituality in the images. A recurring motif of water and a cast of talismanic creatures—a horse, rabbit, owl, tiny snails, a frog—punctuate the portraits, hinting at fairytale tropes and the uncanny. Thresholds between childhood, adulthood, and motherhood are approached, observed, and pass. Universal experiences are shown through the frame of one family—made possible by the bond between two sisters.

‘It really also comes down to this way that I think we as sisters and artists here are trying to take the shame and take control of it ourselves. We are taking control of our own image. The control of it all is why I’m a photographer. You have a lot of trust in me and it’s one of the most meaningful relationships of my life.’