One day, when Uptown resident and freelance photographer Paul Octavious was shooting in his apartment, he saw young Black children walk by his window and stare at him while he worked. As a self-taught photographer who wasn’t exposed to the art form as a child, seeing these children watch him lit a light bulb: How could he help open the door of photography to Black folks wanting an outlet to be creative and document their communities?
“As a human race, we are more visual,” he says. “That’s what happened with George Floyd: People saw this Black man not breathing, with someone’s knee on his neck. I think people had to see it in order to [believe it].”
When he was a junior in high school, he bought his first DSLR camera and taught himself how to use it. He then won a sponsorship from a photo and film rental company to produce a short film about a trans woman wrongly accused of sexual assault to highlight how the justice system disproportionately affects transgender people. Since then, he has been documenting his community and beyond for the last five years. He recently gave his first camera to a friend, also his photo assistant, whose camera was stolen. “If you give a camera or a tool to the source, magic is guaranteed to be made because our lives and our experiences are magical,” Jordan says.
