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Son of an itinerant jazz musician, Robert Earl Wilson was a self-taught photographer from Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 1959 he came to Chicago and immediately began a photographic exploration of his new city. Three years later, Hugh Edwards presented Wilson’s first solo exhibition, Chicago and Its People. Beginning with a series of landscapes taken in Jackson Park during the four seasons, the exhibition presented scenes from across the city. Edwards praised Wilson’s images for their “natural simplicity and skill,” purchasing several works for the permanent collection. Wilson became part of a core group of South Side photographers from the Woodlawn/Hyde Park area who documented Chicago in the mid-1960s.