Frank Stewart (artist)
Frank Stewart (born 1949) is an African-American photographer based in New York. He is best known for photographing prominent Jazz musicians. Biography. Frank Stewart was born in 1949, in Nashville, Tennessee, and was raised in Memphis and Chicago. At the age of 14, he took his first photograph at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. For most of his career, he has been a documentary photographer. With funding from two National Endowment for the Arts Grants, Stewart traveled the country photographing African American communities. In 1977, he was included as part of the first  team of journalists allowed into Communist Cuba. Stewart worked closely with artist Romare Bearden, photographing him at home and at his studio, from 1975 until the artist's death in 1988. Stewart was invited by the Olympic Committee to be the official staff photographer for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. As part of Kamoinge, an African-American photography collective based in New York, he traveled to New Orleans' ninth ward to photo-document the devastation wrought by Hurrican Katrina in 2005. He was an adjunct professor of photography at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Purchase , and served as a consultant for the National Urban League. Frank Stewart is best known for his jazz photographs. He got his start working on the road, touring clubs with jazz pianist and composer Ahmad Jamal in the mid-1970s. For almost 50 years, he has photographed some of the most notable jazz musicians including, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Lionel Hampton, Roy Hargrove, Marcus Roberts, and Wynton Marsalis. Currently, Frank Stewart is senior staff photographer for Jazz at the Lincoln Center. Education. Stewart attended School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and received a BFA  in Photography from Cooper Union in New York in 1975. Exhibitions. Frank Stewart's photographs have been featured in thirty solo shows and dozens of group exhibitions. Collections. Frank Stewart's photographs are in the permanent collections of several major metropolitan museums, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the High Museum.