Born in 1948, and educated in Tulsa, Oklahoma, public schools, Marc Schuman enrolled at Purdue University in the fall of 1966. He gained his deep interest in photography from his father. Most of Marc’s childhood photos were taken with a Rolleiflex medium format camera. These images were developed and printed in a makeshift darkroom in the home Marc’s father designed and built himself.
Marc’s father was an army air corps transportation officer during WWII. Arriving in England after D-Day and not returning to Tulsa until 1946–months after the end of WWII, his many photographs of the places he saw in England and continental Europe were developed and printed under difficult conditions. Marc’s father’s photographs, mounted on black photo album pages with white ink captions, were the spark that led to Marc’s interest in photography.
Though Marc had prepared in high school to study engineering by taking all available advanced placement science and math courses, two years of engineering courses at Purdue were enough to convince Marc that his real love was photography. Changing majors at the end of his sophomore year to Fine Arts with an Area of Concentration in Photography required some catching up with summer school course work , but Marc graduated on time in June of 1970. Marc also completed his studies in naval science during his four years at Purdue and was commissioned an ensign in the naval reserve at the time of his graduation.
Due to the end of the Viet Nam War, Marc’s active naval service was brief. Leaving active naval duty in the fall of 1971, Marc founded and operated for thirty years three photography shops in Western Colorado and Montana. In addition to managing his retail business, he photographed hundreds of weddings and provided a wide range of still and cinema photography services in the Roaring Fork Valley in Western Colorado.
Marc’s use of medium and large format cameras in architectural photography assignments allowed him to perfect the skills he had learned at Purdue under the guidance of Vernon Cheek, Professor of Photography and Steven Rose, Professor of Cinematography. These two professors had essentially paved the way for Marc to remain at Purdue, largely an engineering school with only a small Fine Arts Department, when the decision was made to change majors. Others at Purdue were equally encouraging of Marc’s decision, particularly Captain Irving Knudsen, USN, Professor of Naval Science, who offered considerable counsel and advice in this decision.
Realizing in 1983, that emerging digital imaging would eventually replace silver halide film technology, Marc completed a Master of Business Administration degree at the University of Denver in 1987. After the successful sale of his stores in late 2001, Marc was hired as a district manager for Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart to coordinate operations of the retail chain’s photo labs in the mountain states. It was largely the attainment of his master’s degree, as well as his broad photographic technical knowledge in black and white and color photography, that Marc was hired initially at the district manager level.
At the age of sixty-two, Marc made the decision to leave the retail industry. Since retirement he has been a substitute teacher for ten years in a small rural district east of Colorado Springs. Never without a camera, Marc continues to pursue photography at every opportunity, concentrating most of all on the spectacular scenery in the Rocky Mountains and frequently employing the principles of the Zone System which he learned as a student at Purdue University.
