Artist Siri Kaur has been photographing her family for over 30 years, and her youngest sister, Simran, is the central focus of ‘Sistermoon’. Kaur’s photographs are combined with those from her family archive to create an unconventional album, illustrating the cycles of life and transformation, whilst questioning who observes, who is seen and who belongs.

‘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.

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.