Scott Schuman doesn’t always ask if he can take someone’s picture. If a great shot presents itself – a tender moment he captured last month between an older man and what appears to be his granddaughter, say, or a stylish woman dashing across a cobbled square – he will take a quick snap. But other times, he likes his subjects to look directly into his lens: confident, beautiful, often in sunglasses – sharply dressed women and men in the world’s most fashionable cities.
Today, street-style photography is so ubiquitous it’s hard to remember a time when it wasn’t a thing. But in 2005, when Schuman started to document people on his blog The Sartorialist, as a sideline to the fashion showroom he ran in New York, it felt wildly exciting, despite the fact the likes of Bill Cunningham and William Klein had been doing similar work decades before. Today, at 51, Schuman has the air of a grandfather figure among younger bloggers – from Tavi Gevinson to Tommy Ton – whom he gently dismisses as “influencers”. “I appreciate style in a much wider sense,” he says. “I’m not just chasing likes. There’s no one thing that piques my interest – people don’t have to be ‘fashionable’. But if someone is dressed in a wacky way, it needs a sincerity to it. I’m picky: I might be out for six or seven hours and get four shots – and that’s a good day.”
Indeed, the pleasure of his blog and Instagram feed is in the details: the way a woman’s hair is tied; a well-rolled sleeve; an elderly man in a rakish hat. He often shoots in places such as India and Peru. “Good street photography is about capturing characters,” he says.
Much of his work lines the walls of his apartment in New York, where he lives with his partner Jenny Walton, a fashion illustrator and blogger, and his younger daughter (the older one is in college). Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are filled with photography tomes. He moved here – a two-bedroom apartment in the iconic Police Building in Manhattan, built in 1905 and the HQ of the NYPD for more than 60 years – from a much larger loft. “I lived there with my ex-girlfriend [French photographer and blogger Garance Doré], and it was just too big. Now I want a cosy space. This feels more like home.”
The apartment is painted white and furnished sparingly – partly, one senses, because Schuman cares less about interiors than he does about clothes. “We’ve had fun looking for furniture, but I find it harder than shopping for clothes,” he says. “I know what to look for in a suit, but a couch is more intimidating.”
The pair’s green velvet, L-shaped sofa, from ABC, is a rare nod to colour. Walton is a fan of mid-century vintage: a wooden chair next to the sofa is by Paul László, and a mid-century desk and chair sit in one corner of the couple’s bedroom.
They have three wardrobes between them – two belong to Schuman, one to Walton, a strikingly colourful closet filled with scarves and shoes. “I prefer to have a minimal amount of clothes and dress them up with accessories, which don’t always take up a lot of room,” she says. Schuman feels the same. “I’m not a minimalist, but I have started buying less stuff. I’ve watched [Tidying Up With] Marie Kondo, and of course it’s funny, suggesting we thank our socks every night. But I do think she makes you appreciate what you have more. I’d rather own fewer, nicer things.”
Schuman enjoys spending time at home because he travels so much, but has no intention of stopping any time soon. Of course, he now gets recognised all the time – does that make his job harder? “If someone recognises me, that’s nice. And it can make it easier for people to say yes. But I prefer to be on the edges.”
His focus now is to build up a body of work, a decades-long catalogue of how we look – and how we’ve changed – in the 21st century. “What will my blog look like in 30 years?” he asks. “Now that’s something I’m really interested in.”
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