Artist: Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sartorialist
http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

Scott Schuman began his career as "The Sartorialist" in NYC in 2005. He had left his career in a fashion sales position to care for his daughter. At this time, Schuman began carrying a digital camera with him as he walked the streets of New York. Schuman photographed avaerage people he would encounter who had a strong sense of "personal style."
After working in Fashion sales, Schumann knew that designers often looked at what people were wearing on the streets to determine the next fashion trends so Schuman began photographing in the way of looking for original styles to photograph.
Schuman began in New York, but began taking photographs/portraits in London, Stockholm, Paris, and Milan when traveling there for fashion shows. Schuman became quite popular in the fashion industry for his portraits and even began photographing fashion icons while still continuing to photograph anyone that struck his eye. He has done some work for French Vogue, Saks Fifth Ave, and Carl Lagerfield to name a couple.
Schuman's blog "The Sartorialist" was 2009's most influential blog on fashion out of 400 candidates.

A "Sartorialist" is someone related to the tailoring of clothing. I am not that interested in fashion by any means, but as a photographer I am really in love with Schuman's aesthetic. I mentioned before in my blog how I have been drawn to honesty in photography and I believe that Schuman is an honest photographer. Most fashion photography is tons of hair, make up, fantasy, unrealistic, over the top, haute couture, intense photographs which are then heavily photoshoped and airbrushed.
When looking at Schuman's work, you know that it's an honest photograph and he has the ability to capture each individual's personality within each image while taking really intriguing fashion shots. I admire what he has done by revolutionizing fashion photography in this way, by making supermodels of everyday people of all ages and walks of life.
For me, it is not about the fashion, but the great portraits that he is taking and the fact that he is just out in the world, on the street, photographing.