Frank Stewart: Diary of Globetrotter reviewed in the Washington Post

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“From 1992 to 2019, Frank Stewart was the lead photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center. He’s followed that organization’s orchestra around the world but has also undertaken many solo trips to photograph such scenes as a solstice crowd at Stonehenge and a trio of camels in Mali. That’s why his show at Gallery Neptune & Brown, his second there, is titled “Diary of a Globetrotter.”

The exhibition is the result of a covid-year shutdown during which Stewart revisited his archives, printing many photos that had never been shown publicly. The range, both visual and emotional, is wide. The pictures can cut as deeply as “Only God to Watch My Back, N.Y.” a 1987 portrait of a shirtless man who displays a rosary and a bullet wound. But they also include several images that focus on curtain-like surfaces, whether raindrops on glass or multicolored sticky notes that blanket an empty storefront’s windows.

Stewart came late to color photography, and his color pictures have a different feel than the black-and-white ones. They’re bigger, brighter and often more populous. But they retain the artist’s eye for found patterns and striking compositions. Globe-trotting has taken Stewart far from the Manhattan streets and jazz clubs where he developed his craft, but it hasn’t diluted his style. “

-Mark Jenkins