Robin Everett was doing some research about the Casper area when she came across a story that piqued her attention.
The article on newspapers.com mentioned a photo from Casper being used as art for a Rolling Stones album.
Everett, who is an archivist at the Wyoming State Archives, began digging and eventually found the photo, which was taken by legendary photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank in the 1950s.
That image eventually led Everett to a whole cache of never-before-seen Wyoming photos taken by the photographer that are now part of an exhibit at Cheyenne’s Wyoming State Museum.
“I was born in 1955 and I grew up listening to the Stones,” she said. “I went down and bought the album and found the picture. It's a photo of an Armed Forces Day ceremony that they were having in front of the (Casper) courthouse.
“One of the articles said the photographer was Robert Frank, so I started Googling him and found that he had gone on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1956 in Wyoming and the National Gallery of Art has all the images.”
Finding ‘The Americans’
Considered by many as one of the most influential photographers of the mid-20th century, Frank was best known for his ironic renderings of American life. He immigrated from Switzerland to New York in 1947 and first worked as a fashion photographer.
Frank carried a small Leica III rangefinder camera and worked mostly in black and white.
His images were often blurry or out of focus, giving them a sense of movement and energy. After receiving his first Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955, he embarked on a two-year trip across America and took over 28,000 pictures.
Eighty-three of those images were ultimately published in “The Americans.” His unorthodox cropping, lighting and sense of focus attracted criticism as the book exposed the racism, loneliness and consumer culture lurking behind the American dream.
“He did not let people know that he was taking their picture,” Everett said. “He is just part of the crowd taking a photo. He had a little 35mm Leica that he was using. He was inconspicuous, he didn't want to be seen. So he blended in however he could.”
He began his 10,000-mile journey with a trip to Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.
He then photographed in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. From there he crossed through Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California.
While in California, Frank applied for a renewal of the Guggenheim fellowship. When it was granted in April 1956, he passed through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania on his way back to New York.
During his brief time in Wyoming, Frank journeyed to Dubois, Lander, Fort Washakie, Casper and Lusk. He took more than 20 rolls of film while in Wyoming, resulting in more than 700 images that had never been published.
“They were just everyday people,” Everett said. “They're not posed shots. There's a couple of them that you can see the people caught on that he was taking their picture, but they didn’t in 99% of them.”
In one photo there’s a group of kids at a rodeo leaning against a car and talking, another shows a waitress at a Woolworth's drugstore counter. There are shots from a rodeo and prom in Casper, as well as some Native Americans tending to graves in Fort Washakie.
People line the street during a ceremony featuring Armed Forces Day ceremony in Casper in 1956. The photo was taken by Robert Frank and later used as art for a sleeve of the Rolling Stones album "Exile on Main Street." 
Robert Frank's Wyoming photo of people lining the street during an Armed Forces Day ceremony in 1956 was used as art on the sleeve of the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street" album. (Vinyl Records Gallery) 
This photo of a taxidermist shop was taken during Robert Frank's Wyoming travels and is currently on display at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne. (Wyoming State Museum, The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation) 
Photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank in 1954, left. At right is one of his photos taken during his time in Wyoming called "Woman on Horseback." Archivist Robin Everett has nicknamed the woman "Aunt Dottie." She hopes someone looking at the photo will eventually recognize her and say "Oh, there’s my aunt," or "There’s my mom." (Left, Getty Images; Right, Sotheby's)
Rock And Roll And Wyoming History
It was also in Casper that Frank photographed an Armed Forces Day ceremony featuring saluting servicemen on one side and civilians on the other. The picture is titled simply “Public ceremony — Casper, Wyoming, 1956.”
It is that photo used on the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” album, located on one of the inside sleeves.
Mick Jagger wanted album art that reflected the band as "runaway outlaws using the blues as its weapon against the world.” John Van Hamersveld and Frank were asked to design it, which includes other outtakes from Frank’s Guggenheim trip.
“I didn't own the album when I found out about it, so I went down to what was then Phoenix Books & Music and bought the album,” Everett said. “As I was paying for it, I told the guy behind the counter, ‘You know, there's a Casper picture on this album cover somewhere.’ He said ‘No, no, no’ so we stood there and opened it up, and looked at it until we found it.”
Everett had never heard of Frank before the album discovery, but began learning all she could about the photographer.
When she learned of his unpublished Wyoming photographs, she felt they needed to be seen. Working with the June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation, it took three years for the exhibition to come to fruition.
“While many recognize Frank’s photographic legacy, few know of his photographs taken in Wyoming,” Everett said. “The exhibit aims to spark intergenerational dialogue and preserve community memories.”
Twenty-one images are on display at Cheyenne’s Wyoming State Museum.
The exhibit includes both single-image prints from Frank’s 35mm negatives as well as enlarged contact sheets, displaying about 36 images from a single roll of film.
The foundation also created an online digital catalog with the QR code that people can scan to see the rest of the images.
“I've gone up with several people, and they are just in awe of them,” Everett said of the photos in the exhibit. “It's very funny, because the second time you look at a photo, you see something totally different. They're just that cool.”
People who view the images are encouraged to help identify people and locations in the photographs.
Everett singles out a photo of A.E. Masters taxidermy building, as she was able to find Mr. Master’s son, who is 79 years old and lives in Missoula, Montana.
She called him and he shared memories of working with his dad. Everett also sent him a copy of the image to share with his family.
“That's the other thing that we want people to do, is be able to look at these images and go, ‘Oh, wow, I remember when it was like this,’ or ‘I remember this’ and share those stories with their family members, because that's being lost.”
The photos will be on display through March 29, after which the show will likely travel to other locations around the state. Everett said they are working with the foundation to determine where it will be shown.
