Pioneers: Aaron Christian

What does your work involve? 

All of my work focuses on themes of culture and design, with an aim to explore, celebrate and champion overlooked cultures.

I am the founder of The Asian Man, a digital community that celebrates stylish South Asian men. I have plans to turn it into a coffee-table photography book.

I am a co-host of the What Is This Behaviour? podcast, which highlights South Asians going against the grain and breaking stereotypes. And finally, I’m the founder of AC STUDIOS, a London-based, moving-image content studio focused on fashion, design and culture.

What inspires you? 

I have been particularly inspired by nature documentaries, especially the early David Attenborough ones. I feel the cinematography in those documentaries has really influenced how I shoot my projects.  

The work of Anthony Bourdain has always played a huge part in how I try to see and interact with the world. He gave me a huge amount of curiosity to explore and connect with various cultures.  

I think early family trips to Malaysia always played a huge part. A lot of my work involves exploring and highlighting underrepresented people and places and the art of revealing these new things to people.

What message would you give to the next generation? 

Learn how to build up your soft skills. It’s difficult to know what the world is going to be like in one year, let alone five or ten. Skills like how to network, how to read a room, how to maintain and build relationships are all so vital but are often overlooked.

Also think about your career or your skill set as a long-term thing, as a marathon rather than a sprint. When you do that, you take the pressure off trying to win immediately. You then start to enjoy the journey a little bit more.

There is a great quote by Michelle Obama that says, ‘Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.’ This really resonated with me and I think it’s really important to learn how to harness your own experiences and your story. This is a good place to start when you’re building your own career path.