We met on the steps of the Houses of Parliament in 2003 with some mutual friends. We didn’t really talk, but remember sharing a joke from Seinfeld. We noticed each other a couple more times at burlesque shows in London, but didn’t really talk. It wasn’t until Halloween that same year, while at a burlesque party in the Great Eastern Hotel, that we really hit it off. We had both been asked by the same mutual friend to video a performance there, in one of the rooms. It remains one of the craziest night of our lives, and we went on our first date two days later – to see the Turner Prize at the Tate Britain Museum.
Jessica was studying for her Masters in Photography at The Slade School for Fine Art at UCL, and was entering her final year. The subject of marriage came up quite quickly, and we got hitched the next year, in 2004. We moved to San Francisco in late 2004 and stayed there for the next 7 years, buying our first house, and giving birth to our daughter Nora, in 2010. Our ‘American Dream’ went tits up while Jessica was pregnant, when Julian lost his mortgage paying job (working literally for one of the men Mr. Burns was based on) at a Search Engine in early 2010. We tried holding onto our lives in California for the rest of that year, but eventually moved to Boston for a year and a half, before giving up on our American life in 2012, and moving back to the UK. It was tough choice and we often think of what life would look like if we’d have stayed in the states.
Being back in the UK is great, and rather than move back to London with a young kid, we decided to take a risk and move to Brighton, a city neither of us knew well. That risk payed off, and we’re now woven into our community. We have friends, know our neighbours, and try to do what’s best for our adopted city of Brighton & Hove.
In this time of social media and instagramming only the best of ones lives, we both recognise that our lives aren’t perfect. Anyone who says theirs is is lying. We’re parents now, and struggle with keeping up with the bullshit and pretence of a self absorbed generation of social sharers. We’re slowly coming around to the realisation that social media is quite antisocial. That we’re not able to keep up with the lives of 250 people we follow, let alone, the 20 or so people that we really care about. We live in a time where social media has become engrained in the success of a business, so the little we do, is often reluctant. You won’t find us clawing to get featured on blogs, or posting every moment of our lives on Facebook. We’d much rather be watching Catastrophie, or Fleabag, and inviting our friends over for dinner, and talking to them in real life.
When we’re not working, Photography is still a big part of our lives. We enjoy documenting our own family and surroundings. Jessica wants to teach more and hopes one day in the not too distant future to be able to do that at a University level. Julian wants to get out on his bike more and learn to clear his mind of all the anxieties that the fucked up time we’re all living in brings. He want’s to spend more time doing what he loves: going to the movies, bowling, working on the house, driving the 1969 VW Karmann Ghia he and his dad own, and seeing more of the people he loves.
Both of us want to find more meaning in our lives, and in our jobs. We consider ourselves Documentarians, taking photos not just for our clients, but for posterity, for future generations. That informs our style, unfiltered and uncensored. We freeze reality, as we see it at least, not airbrushed or photoshopped to look ‘better’ than it really was. We believe in Equality, Feminism, raising our daughter with confidence and strength, but also realistic goals – we’re not all able to become premier league footballers, or Beyonce, by simply working harder and more than those around us. Happiness isn’t just a fat paycheque and a flashy car even if that’s something that our society tells us.
