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Solo Exhibition: Once Upon a Time in the West, held 16th April - 9th May 2010

This was a solo exhibition, consisting of fifteen large-scale photographs, held at KIM in Riga, a Gallery that showcases the work of both Latvian and international artists. The exhibition was part of the U.S. Embassy in Latvia’s ‘Month of American Culture’ in Riga (April/May 2010). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bTBYcdfWpU

The photographs were further exhibited in solo-shows including the 2009 Format International Photography Festival (Derby UK) and published in influential photographic journals (including Foto8, Hotshoe International, and FOAM Magazine’s 2009 ‘Talent Issue’).

Research Imperatives

'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, in response to the established tradition with photography of exploring American society and culture via the expansive photographic essay (Walker Evans’ American Photographs, Robert Frank’s The Americans, Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places, Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects, Paul Graham’s American Night, and more), Schuman has pursued work concerned with the propagation of American myths abroad. Schuman 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, by photographing the myth of the ‘cowboy’, the ‘frontier’, ‘Manifest Destiny’ and the ‘Wild West’, he was particularly interested discovering what these remnants found in Spain– flimsy, worn and weathered, but still standing forty years on – might insinuate about the state of contemporary America (particularly during the Bush administration), with its ideals, reputation, ambitions, visions and illusions today.

Portfolio

(i) Evidence of date of dissemination – printout from KIM: Contemporary Art Gallery

(ii) Book: Photocinema includes extended interview by Schuman

(iii) Journal article: Schuman, A. (2009). Once upon a time in the West. Foam. Fall. pp. 198-196

(iv) Press Release: US. Embassy, Latvia

(v) Screenshot: Derby Museum