Robert Earl Wilson

A self-taught photographer from Scranton, Pennsylvania, Robert Earl ("Trees") Wilson would go on to become a mentor to a generation of photojournalists who worked predominantly in Chicago’s South Side in the 1960 and 1970s. Wilson (later known as Adeoshun Ifalade) was given his first camera at age 14. His father’s profession as a jazz musician eventually moved the family to New York City, where Wilson began to explore photography, inspired by the work of Edward Weston. He moved to Chicago in 1959, becoming a mentor to a generation of photographers who worked predominantly in the city’s South Side. In 1962 Wilson had his first solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, organized by Hugh Edwards, then the curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photography. In the exhibition’s accompanying text, Edwards noted that Wilson’s autobiographically driven photographs communicate “the atmosphere of the complex and contradictory time in which he finds himself situated.”

Wilson’s work was featured in the Art Institute’s 2018 exhibition Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950–1980 and in the 2025 digital catalogue dedicated to the exhibition.