195 - Aaron Schuman

A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers

Aaron Schuman is an American photographer, writer, curator and educator based in the UK. He received a BFA in Photography and History of Art from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1999, and an MA in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the University of London: London Consortium at Birkbeck College in 2003.

Aaron is the author of several critically-acclaimed monographs: Sonata, published by Mack in the summer of 2022; Slant, published by Mack, which was cited as one of 2019's "Best Photobooks" by numerous photographers, critics and publications, and Folk, published by NB Books, which also was cited as one of 2016's "Best Photobooks" by numerous people, and was long-listed for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2017. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in many public and private collections.

In addition to to his own photographic work, Aaron has contributed essays, interviews, texts and photographs to many other books and monographs. He has also written and photographed for a wide variety of journals, magazines and publications, such as Aperture, Foam, ArtReview, Frieze, Magnum Online, Hotshoe, The British Journal of Photography and more.

Aaron has curated several major international festivals and exhibitions, was the founder and editor of the online photography journal, SeeSaw Magazine (2004-2014) and is Associate Professor in Photography and Visual Culture, and the founder and Programme Leader of the MA/Masters in Photography programme, at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol).

On episode 195, Aaron discusses, among other things:

• SeeSaw Magazine
• How he fell into curating…
• …And then teaching
• Early interest in documentary photography
• Writing to Richard Avedon
• Takeaways from working for Annie Leibowitz
• Impact of Wolgang Tilmans Turner Prize show…
• …And the experience of printing for him
• How his writing had an important influence on his photography
• Getting the balance back
• First book, Folk
• Slant
• Sonata - trying to see the world through clear, fresh eyes

Referenced:

• Richard Avedon
• Annie Leibowitz
• Wolgang Tilmans
• Cartier Bresson
• Bruce Davidson

“I’m not interested in necessarily making explicitly autobiographical work in a kind of diaristic sense, but I am interested in infusing what I do with something that’s coming from me. It’s a question I ask my students all the time, you know, ‘this is a really good idea for a project but why are you the person to make this project? What do you have to bring to this?’ Because, yes, the subject matter itself might be compelling but if you’re just doing it in the way that I did with the Tibetan monks, that it’s been done a million times before, it’s not addding anything to the culture - we already have those pictures.”

• Become a full tier 1 member here to access exclusive additional subscriber-only content and the full archive of previous episodes for £5 per month.
• For the tier 2 archive-only membership, to access the full library of past episodes for £3 per month, go here.