Framing the Sound: Chuck Stewart’s jazz legacy comes into focus at The Sun ATL

Kim Stewart walks slowly along the walls in the upstairs gallery at The Sun ATL, stepping delicately around framed black-and-white photographs captured by her brother-in-law Chuck Stewart of iconic jazz musicians Miles Davis, Eartha Kitt, Nina Simone, Thelonious Monk and several others. Framed images are staged throughout the Edgewood Avenue gallery, waiting to be hung in an exhibition titled Chuck Stewart: Framing The Sound, set to open Saturday and remain on view through September 26.

She pauses to point out a strikingly colorful portrait of drummer Elvin Jones with a Mona Lisa smile. A hand-rolled cigarette hangs from his lips. Smoke curls around his face, capturing a moment of complete serenity. As Stewart traces the contours of the smoke with her fingertips, her smile matches Jones’ eternal beam.

“Chuck and the photographer Herman Leonard were great friends — best friends,” she says. “People like to talk about how a lot of Herman’s work is obsessed with smoke, just like what you see in this photo here — the smoke is what’s being lit, and it creates atmosphere. Herman first saw that in Chuck’s photos and then went on to make it his own.”

Stewart is not only the sister-in-law to the truly influential photographer; she is also director of the Stewart Archive, making her one of the foremost caretakers of a photographic legacy that helped shape the visual language of jazz and American pop culture in the second half of the 20th century.

Framing the Sound is co-curated by Kim and The Sun ATL gallery owner Shawn Vinson. The exhibition examines Stewart’s work, spanning intimate portraits, album covers, live shots and stoic moments, centered around the hard bop and post bop jazz eras and beyond — circa 1955 through 1988.

Stewart’s career stretched across more than 70 years, producing photographs that appeared on more than 2,000 album covers for record labels including Impulse!, Verve, Mercury, Chess and Reprise. Twenty-five of his prints reside in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, and his photographs have been exhibited everywhere from Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York to museums across Europe.

Stewart’s photographs extend beyond their original role as record company publicity shots. He created photos that stand on their own as works of fine art, even after decades of cultural familiarity has transformed them into visual shorthand for entire musical movements.

“He was probably one of the finest darkroom developers and printers at the time,” Kim says. “He did lighting for Herman Leonard as well.”

Around 1956, Stewart had been working as Leonard’s apprentice. When Leonard traveled to Paris to work with Marlon Brando, Stewart took over the studio and gained access to New York City clubs where, at the time, African American audiences were not allowed to go.

“He started getting access that way, then the producers started calling Chuck to come to the recording studio,” Kim says. “Then the musicians started requesting Chuck. So now the record companies had to hire Chuck.”

Each of the photographs featured throughout Framing The Sound translate the spirit of jazz into visual form, using restrained lighting, elegant composition and an instinct for human connection to extraordinary emotional depth through simple compositions and a profound understanding of light.

The show features more than 60 photos and 64 LP covers. Each image is built with restraint, rhythm and intuition.

Stewart is mostly regarded for his use of black-and-white photography. Framing The Sound, however, marks the first time any of his color images have been shown to the public in the United States.

The exhibition at The Sun ATL is punctuated by five themes: Miles & Trane, From the Vaults of the Chuck Stewart Archive, The Man Behind the Lens, Covers that Defined a Generation and Georgia On My Mind.

Miles & Trane juxtaposes images of John and Alice Coltrane in the 1960s and ’70s with Miles Davis in the 1950s and late ’80s. The unedited photo from the cover of Gil Scott-Heron’s Small Talk At 125th And Lenox — the 1971 LP featuring the seminal spoken-word song “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” — is on display there as well.

A small side gallery traces the man behind the lens, where Stewart’s childhood Brownie box camera is on display with images of opera singer Marian Anderson taken when she visited his middle school in Tuscon, Arizona. It’s the first photograph he shot. From there, photos illustrate Stewart’s time as one of the only Black photographers to photograph the atomic bomb, before pivoting into his music shots.

The main room features some of his most recognizable images from Stewart’s vault, including shots that graced the covers of albums such as Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes’ 1973 spiritual fusion masterpiece Astral Traveling. There are also images from Alice Coltrane’s career-defining 1971 albums Journey In Satchidananda and Universal Consciousness.

Georgia On My Mind features photos of James Brown, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Pebo Bryson, Coretta Scott King, Patty LaBelle, Joe Henderson, James Moody and more.

Covers that Defined A Generation includes an array of iconic album covers that use Stewart’s photography. A total of 64 LPs were hand-selected and donated to the show by LA-based DJ Brian Cross, aka B+.

Framing The Sound focuses on jazz, but, throughout his career, Stewart, shot everyone from the Beatles and the Allman Brothers to Run-DMC. He did Led Zeppelin’s first photo shoot, and his archive is teeming with images of Bob Dylan.

Jazz, however, is where Stewart left his most indelible mark.

The Coltrane and Davis photos honor what would have been both men’s 100th birthday this year. The show is also ramping up for a series of shows to follow, celebrating what would have been Stewart’s 100th birthday in 2027. Framing the Sound at The Sun ATL is the first stop in a worldwide celebration of the photographer’s centennial, offering audiences an opportunity to experience the artistry behind some of the most enduring images in American music while rediscovering the man who quietly framed entire eras of music.

Framing the Sound grew out of conversations between Kim and Vinson, the latter of whom saw an opportunity to present Stewart’s work in a city that has long celebrated Black music but rarely had the chance to examine the visual artists who helped define its history. Rather than mounting a broad retrospective spanning seven decades, they focused on Stewart’s jazz photography — a tighter narrative that reveals both his remarkable technical precision and his gift for capturing musicians at moments of complete creative concentration.

From a collection of 800,000 photographs, Kim edited the show down to roughly 80 images. Vinson edited that collection down to just over 60 images.

“My job is a steward, showing it, sharing it with people through the gallery, making it aesthetically pleasing, honoring the subjects and honoring Chuck — and showing him in his best light,” Vinson says. “… I never thought I’d be short on space, but I had to edit out some favorites.”

Those photographs that didn’t make the cut may be available in the back room for consideration by collectors, Vinson says.

“Chuck, from what I understand, wasn’t really big into gallery shows,” he adds. “He thought they were a waste of time.”

That’s precisely what makes Framing The Sound so compelling. Stewart understood that Miles Davis’ posture could communicate as much as a trumpet solo. He recognized the intensity in Coltrane’s gaze before audiences ever heard A Love Supreme. His portraits of Eric Dolphy, Nina Simone, Astrud Gilberto and Tina Turner reveal genuine personalities rather than spotlight personas, documenting artists during moments that feel remarkably intimate.

It’s easy to think of album covers as nostalgic artifacts or marketing tools. Stewart reminds us they can be something much more ambitious. His photographs distilled improvisation into stillness, preserving fleeting expressions that somehow continue to pulse with movement decades later. Every image carries the feeling that the music has only paused for a moment and will begin again the instant you look away.

Chuck Stewart: Framing The Sound. August 8 through September 26. The Sun ATL. 399 Edgewood Ave. SE, Atlanta. Free to visit. Open Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday through Thursday by appointment. Visit vinsonart.com/exhibitions/ or call 404-939-2787.

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Chad Radford is an Atlanta-based music journalist with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and podcasting.