Scott Schuman is the Sartorialist: a fashion photographer, blogger and author who is leading the way in street style photography. His new book, The Sartorialist: X is out now.
This year, Scott Schuman’s influential fashion photography blog The Sartorialist is celebrating its tenth anniversary. The decade has been wildly successful for Schuman. Since he started the blog, Schuman has worked for GQ, Vogue Paris and Vogue Italia. He’s published three books, the most recent of which is The Sartorialist: X. His blog is getting fourteen million page views a month, and he reputedly earns a million dollars a year.
His photographs are known for how they captivate the imagination. And as he has explained, that’s very much the way that he approaches his work.
“When I take these pictures, I don’t want to know the facts. I want to imagine my own story.”
The fashion world is vastly different now than it was twenty or even ten years ago. Schuman is one savvy entrepreneur who has turned the changes into opportunities. Schuman started out taking photographs of people walking in and out of fashion shows. Now his working week typically involves taking studio photographs for high-end fashion brands in major cities one day and snapping people in remote corners of the world the next day. He still enjoys the almost nomadic nature of the job, spending hours each day wandering the streets in search of fascinating subjects.
The freedom and flair of Schuman’s subjects is what makes them so engaging, and his easygoing style is something that enthralls us. Schuman’s view of style is open-minded and liberating. In his book The Sartorialist: Closer he notes:
“‘Style’ as a concept has been hijacked to mean elite, refined and expensive when it should be thought of as a basic expression of life in much the same way as we all identify with music or speech. At the end of the day style is communication.”
The Sartorialist’s incredible success speaks for itself – Schuman’s fresh idea of style is clearly catching on.
All images © Scott Schuman.
