Rolling Stones Album Art Leads To Stash Of Wyoming Shots By Legendary Photographer

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Rolling Stones Album Art Leads To Stash Of Wyoming Shots By Legendary Photographer
A photo used on a Rolling Stones album sleeve led Robin Everett of the Wyoming State Archives to a stash of never-before-published Wyoming photos by legendary photographer Robert Frank. They’re now on display at the Wyoming State Museum.

Amber Steinmetz
March 09, 2025
6 min read


A photo used on a Rolling Stones album sleeve led Robin Everett of the Wyoming State Archives to unpublished Wyoming photos by Robert Frank that are now on display at the Wyoming State Museum.

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.”

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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.

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