By Cassandra Lopez
Tribune Correspondent
Reprinted – by Texas Metro News
https://www.phillytrib.com
The Brandywine Museum of Art is currently exhibiting “Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present,” a collection of over 100 grayscale and color photographs telling a story of craft and culture written over the span of his six-decade career.
Co-organized by The Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.) and the Telfair Museums (Savannah, Georgia), the exhibition highlights the many facets of the Black experience and culture through the shapings of food, art, travel, music and dance.
“With this exhibition, we have a chance to get a sense of the unlimited range and depth of a contemporary genius,” said co-curator Fred Moten, a poet, scholar, and professor of performance studies at NYU’s Tisch School of Fine Arts.
“Frank Stewart’s combination of loving care for his subjects and thoughtful consideration of his medium is singular and invaluable.”
Stewart believes a great photograph is about three things: the artist, the subject matter and the medium. His collection is just as much about preservation as it is his nomadic and stylistic journey towards a deeper understanding of his roots.
“If you were African American, you were never taught that you had a history,” said Stewart. “It is such a vibrant culture full of language, food, dance and I wanted to know the root of it.
It was a great time,” he continues, “felt so good to be a part of it. It was still new in the ‘50s, no one was talking about African Americans.”
The show opens with some of his earliest work as a teenager capturing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, then delves deeper into thematic groupings that touch on subjects such as the immense influence of gospel, blues and jazz music. Stewart’s photographs of jazz legends Miles Davis, Ahmad Jamal and Wynton Marsalis are spotlighted in the exhibit alongside candid shots of other artists at work.
The exhibit also features work from Stewart’s time in West Africa in pursuit of further grasping the region’s historical and cultural significance. There he found that the drum was still a utilized tone of language and was deeply interested in how this mode of communication was codified in the Caribbean, taking his travels and photography to Cuba.
The exhibit further provides an opportunity to explore his work on environmental catastrophes, including the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the devastating fires in California and the Pacific Northwest.
“This exhibition explores Stewart’s celebratory attitude to life, often with a touch of irony,” said co-curator Ruth Fine, formerly of the National Gallery of Art in D.C. “The theme of intimate and subtle relations between and among people is essential to Stewart’s art. His responses to the human dilemma reflect his ability to gain trust from those with whom he interacts — both friends and strangers.”
Stewart’s work invites viewers in with a quality of timelessness and familiarity portrayed through pieces like “Smoke and The Lovers” and “Bicycle II.”
“Each image I bring a certain experience to. Whoever looks at that image brings their own experience,” Stewart shared. “My whole existence is summed up in one photograph, and when someone looks at it, their whole existence is summed up too. They brought what they felt from it, and I brought what I felt to it.”
The Brandywine Museum of Art is the fourth and final stop for this exhibition, which previously traveled to The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.; Artis-Naples, The Baker Museum in Naples, Florida; and Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia. The exhibition will be on view at the museum through Sept. 22.
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