Once Upon a Time in the West by Aaron Schuman (October 24, 2009) 
(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)
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Curator statement
This week Jörg M Colberg is exploring cultural perspectives by presenting a week of photographers who were born in one country and emigrated to another at some point in their life. Today's presentation: Aaron Schuman, an American living in Europe. Colberg: Having moved abroad, Aaron found himself in a bit of a difficult situation: While many Europeans have lots of stereotypes about America, having to answer for the country while George W Bush was president put him in a somewhat nasty spot. I love how Aaron approached this conundrum. Seemingly accepting the stereotypes of American life as true, he visited sets of European "spaghetti Western" movies.
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Our poll "A photo essay always needs a great written story" closed. 267 people voted, 28% agrees, 72% disagrees. 233 people answered our follow-up question "Are you a photographer?" 82% indicated they are, 18% said no. Initially, negative answers to question #1 were almost 100% as was the pecentage of photographers among respondants. Then, when the level of non-photographers started to rise, the percentage of people indicating good text is always essential started to rise too. This seems to indicate that non-photographers think that adding good text to your photo essays is essential. In my opinion: if you want non-photographers to dig your work, you know what to do...
Once Upon a Time in the West was photographed on the eroding sets and locations of Sergio Leone’s celebrated 1960’s ‘spaghetti Westerns’, deep in the Almerian deserts of southern Spain.
For several years I have pursued work concerned with the propagation of American myths abroad.
I recently became fascinated by the notion that a fundamental American archetype – the Wild West, and its associations with freedom, independence, rebelliousness, brutality, morality, honour and so on – had been transposed by an Italian film director onto the landscape of Franco’s Spain, and subsequently came to define this ‘quintessentially American’ genre in itself.
Furthermore, I was particularly interested discovering what these remnants – flimsy, worn and weathered, but still standing forty years on – might insinuate about the state of contemporary America, along with its ideals, reputation, ambitions, visions and illusions today.
Aaron Schuman (1977) lives and works in London, UK.
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