The Sartorialist Book

K, so Scott Schuman is a blogger/ photographer who goes out on the streets (in big cool cities) and takes photos of 'the real people' to show as he put it: 'a two-way dialogue about the world of fashion and its relationship to daily life'

So, I like fashion and I wish I had enough money to dress myself the way I would like to and I love portrait photography so I was thinking I'd real like this book. Well, yeah, not so much.

Main gripe is that although Schuman says in the book that he tries to find a diverse range of people and fashions but he doesn't and he totally photographs a type. There were, like, two woman of fuller figure, a few more men, no one with visible physical disabilities and the majority of his subjects were classically good looking. They were mostly rich looking carefree types smoking and riding vintage bikes. Where are the tired commuters? Parents with their babies? Fashionable peeps actually doing their daily life? You don't have to be 'beautiful' to look good in clothes.

Another thing I found creepy was the way the majority of women posed themselves (or does he ask them to pose?) since when did everyday ladies stand around like vulnerable bambies with sad/scared eyes and turned in toes? It's super creepy and sad. On the topic of creepy: the rich people trying to look slummy and hobo chic is fricking creepy too. It's so horribly bogus that rich fucks spend 100s if not 1000s of bucks on patchy falling apart retro type threads to look homeless when the actually homeless have 0 bucks and die because they cannot clothe themselves and stay warm.

I don't hate on Schuman, I think he is talented and he obviously leads an interesting life. I just think if he is going to claim to be some sort of social documenter he should pull his camera away from the shiny pretty things for a moment and document some of the marginalized too.