Meeting with Aaron Schuman and James Brown | 22.05.2016

In FOLK, Aaron Schuman explores the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow—its collections and exhibits, as well as its own distinct customs and culture—via his own personal history. In one sense, the book focuses specifically on the regional and cultural heritage of Schuman’s forefathers, but equally considers the ways in which this heritage has been collected, preserved, archived, documented and represented via the field of ethnography, and within the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow itself. Bringing together Schuman’s own photographs of the museum’s collection and images from its vast archive, FOLK is an examination of the Ethnographic Museum’s own traditions, history, archives, artifacts and practices over the course of the last century; it represents a story of curiosity, self-discovery and the forging of both history and memory. Personal narrative is interwoven with preservation and documentation, as Schuman wholeheartedly embraces the museum’s stated mission of being a “centre of reflection and understanding, of both ourselves and others.”

FOLK

by Aaron Schuman

Cloth-bound hardback with screen-printed cover

80 Pages, 28 x 23 cm

ISBN 978 0 9935825 0 9

Published May 2016

http://nbbooks.co.uk/001-folk.html

Aaron Schuman (www.aaronschuman.com) is an American artist, writer, editor and curator based in the United Kingdom. His photographic work is exhibited and published internationally, and is held in a number of public and private collections. He has contributed texts to a number of recent books, including Alec Soth: Gathered Leaves (MACK, 2015), Vision Anew (University of California Press, 2015), The Photographer’s Playbook (Aperture, 2014), and Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals (Prestel, 2014), amongst many others; he also writes regularly for magazines such as Frieze, Aperture, Foam, TIME, and Hotshoe. Additionally, Schuman has curated several major exhibitions, including Mixtape (2016), In Appropriation (2012), Other I: Alec Soth, WassinkLundgren, Viviane Sassen (2011), and Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs (2010). In 2014, he served as Curator of Krakow Photomonth 2014 – entitled Re:Search, the main program featured major exhibitions by Taryn Simon, Trevor Paglen, Jason Fulford, Clare Strand, Walker Evans / David Campany, Eyal Weizman and others. Schuman is a Senior Lecturer at both the University of Brighton and Arts University Bournemouth, and is the founder and editor of SeeSaw Magazine (www.seesawmagazine.com).

James Brown, London-based publisher who produces books on photography and art. Runs NB Books as well as working within the arts in a communications and publishing capacity.

Agnieszka Dwernicka, she has completed post-graduate Cultural Manager Studies at the Warsaw School of Economics, photography at the Łódź Film School, and German literature at the Jagiellonian University. She is a Doctor of the Humanities. Dwernicka has been director of Krakow Photomonth in Krakow since 2013, and chairwoman of the Visual Arts Foundation since January 2015.