Frank Stewart’s epic portrait of Black culture & community

Grow­ing up in the 1950s and ​‘60s, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Frank Stew­art trav­elled between fam­i­ly in Mem­phis, Chica­go, and New York, devel­op­ing a keen sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the region­al inflec­tions of Black Amer­i­can life. 

“That was real­ly the begin­ning of his peri­patet­ic life. In many ways, I think Frank is most com­fort­able either in a jazz show or in the car going some­place,” says Ruth Fine, cura­tor of the trav­el­ing exhi­bi­tion and cat­a­logue, Frank Stew­art’s Nexus: An Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Jour­ney, 1960s to the Present.

Frank Stew­art’s Nexus charts the photographer’s extra­or­di­nary jour­ney over the past six decades. Although Stew­art made his first pho­tographs at 14, when he accom­pa­nied his moth­er Dot­ty to the his­toric March on Wash­ing­ton for Free­dom and Jobs in August 1963, his sto­ry begins in the blues, gospel, and jazz — the soul of Black America.

As a youth, he accom­pa­nied musi­cian Phineas New­born Jr., who Dot­ty would lat­er mar­ry, to New York’s leg­endary jazz clubs. When New­born was on the road, he pho­tographed in colour, and showed the slides at home, intro­duc­ing Stew­art to his life­long pas­sions: jazz and photography.

In 1969, Stew­art made New York his home base, and got know pho­tog­ra­ph­er Roy DeCar­a­va, whose ground­break­ing 1955 col­lab­o­ra­tion with poet Langston Hugh­es — The Sweet Fly­pa­per of Life — reimag­ined the land­scape of pho­to book publishing.

Recog­nis­ing a kin­dred spir­it, DeCar­a­va sup­port­ed Stewart’s appli­ca­tion to The Coop­er Union. Here Stew­art met artist and edu­ca­tor George Nel­son Pre­ston, who encour­aged him to pur­sue a six-month inde­pen­dent study pro­gram in sev­en coun­tries across West Africa in 1974.

After grad­u­at­ing in 1975, Stew­art hit the road with jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, while also work­ing as staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er for the Stu­dio Muse­um in Harlem. The fol­low­ing year he met jazz trum­peter Wyn­ton Marsalis and forged a bond that would cul­mi­nate in a three-decade col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stew­art work­ing as senior staff pho­tog­ra­ph­er at Jazz at Lin­coln Center.

“Up to that point, Frank was look­ing for, doc­u­ment­ing and con­vey­ing the ori­gins of the African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence,” Fine says. ​“Once he start­ed trav­el­ing around the world with the orches­tra, he found him­self in places like Chi­na where there was no African Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence so he had to shift what he was look­ing for.”

It was then that Stewart’s for­ma­tive rela­tion­ships with artists Jack Whit­ten and Romare Bear­den came into play, guid­ing him toward for­mal issues of pho­tog­ra­phy like com­po­si­tion, light, shape, and col­or. ​“That’s about the time when he shift­ed to dig­i­tal,” says Fine, point­ing to Stewart’s con­tin­u­ous exper­i­men­ta­tion across the medium.

“He keeps adding things, but he does­n’t detract any­thing. His inter­ests expand, his body of friends expands, and nobody gets lost,” she con­tin­ues. ​“He likes to speak with peo­ple and has an abil­i­ty to meet some­one for the first time and gain their trust because they sense he is sin­cere and has a deep inter­est in them.”

Frank Stew­art’s Nexus: An Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Jour­ney, 1960s to the Present was on view at the Brandy­wine Muse­um of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

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