©Hinda Schuman, cover of Dear Shirley

Love is a funny thing…it takes us to our highest highs and lowest lows. Our love life marks our personal histories and shapes the course of our lives. Photographer Hinda Schuman has documented the people she has loved in “an intimate and highly personal account of what it is like to live through the unraveling of relationships — both heterosexual and lesbian”. Through photographs and text her storytelling is a new book, Dear Shirley, A True Story published by Daylight Books, with forewords by Magdalena Sole and Sunil Gupta.  Hinda states, “Dear Shirley is about the power of photographs to unleash feelings and insights about both the beauty and horror of real life. I consider myself a visual storyteller. I use images –with and without text to create stories. I point the camera at myself as often as I look outward. This book tells the real life true story of the dissolution of two marriages: Jeremy after 10 years & Susan after 27 years.”

To order this book, please contact the artist directly: hinda@hindaschuman.net

Hinda Schuman was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1948. She has lived in Philadelphia since 1983. She received an MFA in photography from Tyler School of Art of Temple University in 1985. She married Susan Toler in 2014 in New York City.

Her photographic work over the decades, including Dear Shirley and A True Story has involved personal storytelling. Both projects have been exhibited in the United States and internationally. Other documentary projects include Halfway Home, about incarcerated women, exhibited at CUNY-Staten Island; and Boxing: the fights, the gyms, the onlookers and the fighters, which received a Fleisher Challenge Grant Award. From 1989-2009 she was a staff photographer at The Philadelphia Inquirer covering local and state issues, human interest and sports.

She currently teaches photography from her studio and at the University of the Arts Continuing Education Department. Her work has been included in group shows and individual exhibitions. Individual images are in the collection of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City. Dear Shirley-A True Story was published by Daylight Books in May 2018.

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

Dear Shirley is about the power of photographs to unleash feelings and insights about both the beauty and horror of real life. I consider myself a visual storyteller. I use images –with and without text to create stories. I point the camera at myself as often as I look outward. These images are from a series entitled “Dear Shirley, A True Story”. It tells the real life true story of the dissolution of two marriages: Jeremy after 10 years & Susan after 27 years.

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley

©Hinda Schuman, from Dear Shirley