Frank Stewart is not just a photographer; it is an artist. While many people know him for his jazz photography, he has also taken images of art, joy, love and the environment of people in Africa and Cuba, the Caribbean and Nova Scotia. Orleans for three decades. Nexus by Frank Stewart: the journey of an American photographer, from the 1960s to the present day, his first museum retrospective at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, shows the extent of this work. Interactive activities with Stewart, including a portfolio review for photographers and a meditation session, will complement the exhibit, which opens tomorrow June 10 and runs through September 3.
Co-curators Ruth Fine, the former director of the National Gallery of Art, who first met Stewart in 1999, and poet, scholar and teacher Fred Moten envision the retrospective as a visual autobiography of Stewart’s life . Along with his captivating images, the exhibit will include some of his old cameras and photographs by him and other artists from the Kamoinge Workshop, a New York-based collective of African-American photographers. Stewart wrote the label for each image on display with the aim of telling a full story of his life.
Due to the lack of darkness he encountered growing up in segregated Memphis, Tennessee, Stewart used his camera to capture the history and evolution of black culture.
“I always wanted to go to Africa to find out the roots, then I wanted to go to the Caribbean to find out how it was codified, then to New Orleans to see what it ended up in terms of music,” Stewart said. Hyperallergic.
His talents have earned him several awards and unique opportunities. He was the first artist-in-residence photographer at the Studio Museum in Harlem and photographed the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics and the Democratic National Convention for Chicago Defender, among historical events. Stewart was one of the first photographers to enter communist Cuba under former President Fidel Castro. He is now the senior photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, the concert hall and orchestra conducted by Wynton Marsalis.
Stewart’s artistic vision for photography stems from his beginnings in painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1962. He switched to photography after realizing he could see his failures more quickly and improve. faster.
He took his first photos in 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with his mother’s Kodak Brownie camera. Shortly after photographing the march, Stewart met The soft fly paper of life (1955) by Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava, which transformed his life and perspective on photographs and later led him to move to New York to study with DeCarava, Joel Meyerowitz, Arnold Newman, Jack Whitten and George Nelson Preston at the Cooper Union in 1971.
“What I got from Roy [DeCarava] was the love he had for black people, and it showed in his work,” Steward said. “I hoped that the same kind of love and empathy that I have for black people showed up in my work as well.” Inspired by DeCarava and Hughes’ major collaboration, he and his Kamoinge brothers released The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Tale of the African-American Family in 2004.
After earning a BFA, Stewart met Romare Bearden, whom he worked with for over a decade. “All I got from Bearden was osmosis, just being close to him. He would say a certain thing, or he would tell me stories, or he would show me what he was doing, and that influenced the way which I built my frames,” he said.
Stewart used the lessons he learned from these major personalities to take stunning and profound photographs that speak to the humanity and emotions of his subjects. “Juneteenth ’93, 19th of June Celebration, Mexia, Texas” (1993), a close-up black and white image of a man and woman dancing, their faces hidden and their limbs intertwined, shows his ability to represent musicians as well as the intimate moments experienced by the public. “Smoke and the Lovers, Memphis” (1992), taken in Stewart’s hometown in a restaurant where the owners knew his whole family, lets the viewer feel the calm and familiarity of being in a cozy atmosphere. A black and white photo titled “Radio Players Series (Or The Bus)” (1987), part of his LIFE magazine series Youth in Harlem, shows the tension of black love. The image depicts a young couple wearing button-down shirts and baggy pants sitting on a bus looking in opposite directions in a way that brings the viewer into a moment of intimacy.
Stewart’s image-making and career reflect the far-reaching impact music has had on his work. During the week, her mother played rhythm and blues; on Sundays, she only played gospel. His photograph titled “Stomping the Blues” (2004), of a performance of Pulitzer Prize-winning Wynton Marsalis’ jazz oratorio on slavery and its aftermath Blood on the fields, depicts musicians playing trumpets and banging their way offstage as well as reactions from audience members. The image embodies Stewart’s mission to compose an innovative image while capturing the feelings of everyone in the room. Beyond his jazz work, Stewart aimed at the daily lives of musicians, ensuring that their stories were not overlooked.
“Very few musicians were documented in the beginning, except for the most famous,” he said. “For every famous, there were 10 or 15 guys trying to play music, and those guys had to be documented as well.”
Like his photos of musicians, Stewart’s other images transport the viewer to different cultures and times. In “Clock of the Earth, Mamfe, Ghana” (1998), three women form a triangle holding a basket over their heads as they walk early in the morning to fetch water as a woman walks in front and a boy runs away in the background. The stillness and tranquility of the image portrays the essence of a morning in Ghana. “Bicycle II, Cienfuegos” (2004) taken on the south coast of Cuba is a black and white image that shows Stewart balancing form and space to emphasize the ethos of places unknown to him. “Goree Island Painter” (2006) exemplifies Stewart’s ability to balance color and pigmentation. Against the bright orange background of the Château des Esclaves, a museum and memorial dedicated to the victims of the Atlantic slave trade in Senegal, a black man turns away from the camera, so that only his back is visible. The backdrop enhances the complexion of the black man’s skin, accomplishing Stewart’s goal of creating a metaphor for slavery, and elicits the emotions of pain and suffering that enslaved black people face. His compositions and attention to detail capture the ethos of places unknown to him.
Stewart currently focuses on photographing disasters caused by climate change and its environmental impacts. Her image “Katrina: Hammond B-3, 9th Ward, New Orleans” (2007) depicts damage to a keyboard caused by Hurricane Karina. The color and texture of the instrument and the composition of the image illustrate the sadness and damage caused by the storm, which destroyed more than 100 churches in New Orleans; only 11 survived.
“Back then it was all black and white, but now everyone shoots in color and digital. Everyone has a camera now, everyone is a photographer,” he said. “I try to be an artist. So I hope that sets me apart from the average person with a camera.
