journal no. 2 : co-director's intro statement

escape and development

When Phil and I reconnected after university, it was thanks in large part to the major arts. Sure, our mutual friends and shared vices helped to draw us together each weekend, but it was through our passions for music, literature, and the visual arts that we actually bonded.

Dredging the internet in search of inspired musicians/singers/rappers, throwing around brilliant new (and old) authors, combing through museums and galleries (and yes, the internet) for artists/designers/illustrators who expanded our perception and imagination. Outside of our corporate lives we were each voraciously searching for creative inspiration. Not for any clearly articulated reason other than to escape the doldrums of our everyday lives. We would drunkenly expound on grandiose theories of life and art, try our hands at prose and poetry, or evoke (to use the term loosely) our ideas on paper and canvas. Each endeavor fueled by the driving need to escape.

Moving back to DC after my most recent stint away, Phil and I realized we had both separately picked up the camera as our current tool of creative escapism. Naturally our initial attempts to express ourselves in the medium were hesitant, but there was promise. Crafting visual stories had always appealed to our sentimentality, and here was a tool that we each took to with alacrity.

Now our conversations shifted, focusing instead on increasing our photographic vocabulary, studying photographers whose work we admired, experimenting with techniques and processes. We quickly found our preferences in crafting images were in close harmony. But what to do with this iteration of escapism?

It was Phil who first suggested, casually during one of our now indispensable bullshitting sessions, that we should start a collaborative project. Our vague confluence of ideas for the project gave way to a concrete form, which in turn organically grew into the Oculoire y’all see here. As Phil pointed out, this endeavor has been a long time coming for both of us, but neither of us expected it to bloom as quickly or naturally as it did. Oculoire continues to evolve as an embodiment of our creative lingua franca, and we hope that y’all will enjoy the journey.