NEW YORK, NY.- From ​June 4 to July 29, 2017​, the ​Wilmer Jennings Gallery at Kenkeleba​, presents Time, Light and Ritual.​ The exhibition of photographs by ​John Simmons and ​Frank Stewart​ is a milestone that represents the coming together of two life-long friends who picked up cameras in their early teens. Both have devoted decades to telling the story of their lives through the lens of a camera. The more than 60 photos in black and white, taken between 1967 and 2016, capture rural and urban street scenes, family gatherings, scenes from banquet and pool halls; images of ordinary people at rest and at work and extraordinary portraits.

Frank Stewart grew up in Chicago and his life in the music and art world gave him the opportunity to see and share the culture through a visual style all his own. John Simmons grew up in Chicago and spent a considerable amount of time experiencing life in the southern United States. Both photographers are world travelers. ​Time Light and Ritual​ reveals what they both live a cultural experience that embraces humanity, expressed with sincerity and warmth. Stewart explains the concept within the exhibition title:

. . .Everything we do is a ritual: From the way we eat our food, the way we put on our clothes, or the way we dance. Albert Murray calls it, "The prevalence of Ritual." Someone who does the same rituals every day is a sane person. Someone who does erratic rituals is not. A ritual presided over by priests is a religion. I'm saying this to state that what we are doing in this medium is documenting light on the surface of rituals, and the rituals John and I habituate are within an Afrocentric culture.

Frank Stewart​ was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1949, and migrated to Chicago. There, he attended the Art Institute, later receiving a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York. He has exhibited nationwide in galleries and museums including The Schomburg Center, the Studio Museum and The Museum of Modern Art; the High Museum in Atlanta, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Mint Museum in Charlotte. He is a recipient of awards and artists fellowships, and was among the first North American journalists invited to visit Cuba in 1977. In 1984, he photographed the Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Frank Stewart’s images are published in numerous books, including ​Sweet Swing Blues​ ​on the Road with Wynton Marsalis. He is the Senior Photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center.

John Simmons ​was born in Chicago in 1950. By 1965 after seeing Roy DeCarava’s book ​ Sweet Flypaper of Life, he decided to become a photographer. Mentored by photojournalist Bobby Sengstacke of ​The​ ​Chicago Defender​, Simmons studied photography, graduated from Fisk University in Nashville and received a Master’s Degree from the University of Southern California. He is an Emmy Award winning member of the American Society of Cinematographers. John Simmons also teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles.