Collective Vision: Oculi 

A group of 10 Australian photographers are making a significant mark on the national and international photographic scene - and even photographic history - through their dedication and commitment to the process of making pictures. Collectively called Oculi they have more than 20 world-class awards between them and a massive wealth of working experience as photojournalists. They seek process over outcome, and their work reminds us that creative excellence is about dedication to one's craft while allowing the spirit of discovery to lead the way. Oculi is showcased on their website, where the photographers post a changing gallery of images of daily life. 

The great thing about being in Oculi is that it's unedited and unfettered,' says freelance photographer Jeremy Piper. 'Being part of it forces you to go a bit further all the time, motivating you to produce different images. I'm proud to be a photographer, to be documenting daily life that's happening around us right now, and in the most honest and artistic way possible.'

It was this desire for honesty in picture making that inspired founder members Dean Sewell, Trent Parke and Narelle Autio, all World Press Photo winners, to invite a select group of photojournalists to form Oculi.

'At the end of 1999 I was approached by the web company Sapient who offered to create a site for me pro bono,' says Sewell. 'Instead of me doing it alone, we saw it as a chance to form a collective, and we ran with it. The criteria for who we invited was that they had to be prolific and committed, and feel the same dissatisfaction with what was happening to photos in the media that we did. We'd been maturing in our craft and wanted to progress photography, but felt our industry wasn't keeping up with that progression. Editors were still looking for contrived and literal images while we'd moved on.'

Parke 'moved on' to become Magnum Photos' first ever Australian photographer, while Sewell, Autio and Piper, along with Glenn Hunt, Nick Cubbin, Nick Moir, Tamara Dean, Jesse Marlow, Warren Clarke and Tamara Voninski continued to build Oculi to its current profile. Recognised as a collection of exceptional talent, Oculi was picked up by European agency Agence VU in 2003.

'They were impressed by the vibrancy and the different vision,' recalls Marlow, who was Oculi's representative in Paris at the VU signing. 'It was a coup for us, as we've become their Australian photographic pool. In Paris and London, photographers were telling me they hadn't seen anything like our photos before. They talked about us having a view that was almost hyper-real, and a style they described as "dreamlike".'

'We have a cult following on the website,' says Voninski. 'We get hits from all over the world, from people of all walks of life. They check in regularly because the photos change every month.Oculi has been described as a photographic movement. It's been noticed that what's happening here in photojournalism is quite unique. I'd say the European tradition has poetic images of daily life while the American tradition is more storytelling, but Australian photography is a cross between the two.'

'We've created something that's brought attention to our type of photography in Australia,' says Hunt. 'There's been a big gap since Max Dupain and David Moore in the 1960s. We've all grown through press photography and in many ways grown beyond it. People like Michael Amendolia and Russell Shakespeare were producing inspiring, uncontrived work in the 1990s. They supported exhibitions like Reportage, but until Oculi there wasn't anywhere we could really band together to showcase and strengthen photojournalism as we can now.'

Oculi's mission statement is to 'reveal the beauty, wonder and struggle of everyday life without contrived photo shoots or art-directed aesthetics,' so just what is the image of Australia that emerges from their 'unflinching gaze'?

'What we aim to do is show a truly contemporary picture, from the bush to the city,' says Dean. 'In the past, a lot of images from Australia have been contrived, centred on famous landmarks, all very predictable.'

The environment of Australia is beach, bush and city and these are reflected in the Oculioeuvre, but with a fresh take. Instead of Bondi surfers there is the edgy abstraction of Cubbin's kite flyers, or Autio's lyrical water pictures. Instead of Aborigines with didgeridoos, there is the joyous warmth of Marlow's football community in 'Centre Bounce', or Hunt's hypnotic 'Arnheimland'.

A window is opened on our city dwellers as never before in Sewell's stark pageantry of Newtown festival, the honest intimacy of Dean's 'Fringe dwellers' and the soft surrealism of Voninski's 'Angels on escalators,' while our landscape is revealed in all its force in Nick Moir's fires and storms. Moir says, 'Oculi is showing Australia through the eyes of Australian photographers who are sick of stereotyped pictures. It's showing the rest of the world that Australian photography is growing up.'

'A lot of photographers go overseas to shoot stories,' says Cubbin. 'In some ways it's probably harder to see what surrounds you all the time, but we want to show that there are these pictures, this energy, coming out of Australia, and our collective brief challenges us to look at things here as if for the first time.'

'The feedback I've had from overseas is that Australian photographers are hard working and inventive,' says Autio. 'Because there's not so much hard news here, we tend to search out good photos. I've met a number of European editors who love how we work to get something out of every situation.'