14 April – 9 May
Aaron Schuman

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 Schuman has pursued work concerned with the propagation of American myths abroad. He recently 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. Schuman has been particularly interested in exploring these remnants and what they may say about America today.

Listen to Aaron Schuman interviewed at Format festival 2009