Monday 11 May 2009

Aaron Schuman Once Upon a Time in The West

Aaron Schuman is a senior lecturer at the AIB as well as lecturing in Brighton and I was lucky enough to catch his exhibition 'Once Upon a Time in The West' at the HOST gallery which ended on the 9th of May but the series can be seen on Aaron's website. The photographs for this showcase were photographed on the eroding sets and locations of Sergio Leone's celebrated 'Spaghetti Westerns', deep in the Almerian deserts of southern Spain. Aaron recently became fascinated by the notion that a fundamental American achetype-the Wild West, and it's associations with freedom, independence, rebelliousness, brutality, morality, honour and so on- had benn transposed by an Italian film director onto the landscape of Franco's Spain, and subsequently came to define this 'quintessentially American' genre in itself. Schuman has been particularly interested in exploring these remnants and what they may say about America today. (note: this blurb has been stolen from the blurb from the exhibition)

I really like being able to go to exhibitions whenever I am in London which isn't as frequently as I would like and it has been especially enjoyable to see some of my lecturers work in the form in which it is intended. Hopefully going to the print space to see 5 emerging photographers at the LPA Futures 09 including Ben Robberts (who I highly rate, and is an alumni at AIB) who recently won the BJP project assistance awards so congratulations to him.

London - Placement

Right i'm in London at the moment and about half way through my placement, I am currently working at Skinnydip and I have had great fun Street casting for a new catalogue for a large US company that is moving to the UK, I have also been meetin Art Buyers and other potential clients and delivering portfolio's to them, had a look through some great photographers work and it was really interesting to see the work produced at A3 size. Also had a sneek peak at Lawrence Watson's new book done in conjunction with Adidas. Containing some of his images from the last 25 years which has seen him work for the NME whilst Rap started to boom and develop strong friendships with bands like Oasis and Paul Weller over the years. This body of work is also going to make an exhibition running from 30th of May to the 7th of june at the londonNewcastle Project Space. Tommorrow of to Assist Stephan Morgan which I am really excited about.

Also fellow peer Toby Roberts has put together a book containing all of us year 1 photographers at the AIB, it's a really great idea and I know Toby has put in a lot of leg work to get this together, so I want to thank him for doing that. You can have a preview and purchase it here.