Aaron Schuman is an American artist and educator living in the United Kingdom
Episode 301: Aaron Schuman is a colleague, friend, and someone I look up to in photography. He is an educator, writer, and highly talented image-maker and thinker. He has just published his beautiful new book Sonata with MACK. This is our second transmission.
This episode was a pure joy to record. Aaron and I tend to have exceptionally deep and meaningful conversations about his work and the medium of photography in general terms. I always set down the headphones after speaking with him with the feeling of wanting to speak more, or I find myself thinking over the following days about what I wish I had asked. That is a telling sign of a significant engagement with someone.
In this episode, we talk about Aaron’s work in the context of his previous books and how Italy as a concept and place informed Sonata. We spoke about Italian photographers and Italy’s general landscape, a country we are both fond of. We managed to speak about what it is like to speak from the point of view of being a constant foreigner and what it means to remain unsettled, as both of us have made our journey to Europe from America. Yet, neither of us feel entirely native after nearly a few decades abroad. It is a bit of a superpower, allowing constant observations to form without complacency.
Please tune into this episode. The casual conversation has some incisive and revealing thoughts about photography, glancing, and the notion of being a foreigner.