For the first time in nine years, the Brandywine River Museum of Art has a photography exhibit on display. “Frank Stewart’s Nexus: An American Photographer’s Journey, 1960s to the Present” runs through Sept. 22.
At 14 years old, Stewart and his mother went to the 1963 Martin Luther King March on Washington, and he began shooting photos. He was only 14. He said at the press preview for the exhibit that he wanted to be a painter, but photography became his primary art.
“I painted first. My mother was a painter and I wanted to follow in her footsteps and make her proud of me. I started painting and then I found out I was terrible.”
He was impatient with painting, he said, because it took too long, but that he could shoot 36 exposures in a short time, and “I could find out how many were terrible right away.”
According to BRM senior curator Amanda Burdan, “The idea behind this exhibit was partly in response to the fact that we haven’t done a lot of photography here at the Brandywine, and we want to introduce it in a smart and thoughtful way. One of the things that we are really attracted to in the larger body of Frank’s work is his social consciousness, his intelligent environmental issues…That inspired us to get to know his work more, but it’s really a retrospective of his entire career.”
The exhibit — co-curated by Ruth Fine, formerly of the National Gallery of Art in D.C., and Fred Moten, a poet, scholar, and professor of performance studies at NYU’s Tisch School of Fine Arts, along with Burdan — is broken down into seven sections, with each section representing a theme.
Rituals, Sound Taste Touch, Africa Caribbean New Orleans: Searching for Roots, Artist Portraits Windows Drawings, Social Practice, Cultures in Color, and Chromatic Music. In all, those themes reflect Stewart’s exploration of life and artistic style.
Fine said the Ritual section of the exhibit starts with him taking pictures of the march and reflects his search for his background.
“When he did those,” she said, “he wasn’t an artist yet. He was at the march with his mother and realized something amazing was going on…Beyond that, the Ritual section includes a lot of work that deals with rituals within the African American community or rituals within the spaces he lived.”
But Stewart’s work goes beyond that. He traveled to New Orleans several times after Hurricane Katrina to document the destruction and the attempts to rebuild sections of the city that had been destroyed. He’s traveled extensively and was even able to photograph Fidel Castro while in Cuba.
He said he and other photographers and writers were taken to a room and told not to move from where they were sitting. Castro came in and gave a speech.
There was a light that was on in the background but, because he wasn’t allowed to change location, he couldn’t avoid getting the light in the image, so he made it part of the composition.
Stewart’s artistic journey has led him to the streets and clubs to photograph artists, singers, musicians, and everyday people living their lives.
In a press handout, Moten said “With this exhibition, we have we have a chance to get a sense of the unlimited range and depth of a contemporary genius. [His] combination of loving care for his subjects and thoughtful consideration of his medium is singular and invaluable.”
The last photography exhibit at the Brandywine was that of James Welling’s “Things Beyond Resemblance” in August of 2015. In that exhibit, the photographer took photos of locations rthat artist Andrew Wyeth had painted.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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