OJO Images / Caia Image

For 20 years of my working life, photography was a collective undertaking.

OJO Images began with six photographers, each bringing a distinct temperament, ambition and way of seeing. We were independently minded, sometimes fiercely so, but shared the unlikely conviction that together we might build something none of us could have achieved alone.

There is something rather beautiful about that arrangement. The individual appetite for recognition, possession and control — all those familiar animal instincts — was not so much overcome as persuaded to serve a larger purpose.

We invested in one another. We travelled, argued, invented, took risks and made photographs. We assembled teams, created elaborate productions and built a collection that grew far beyond our individual imaginations.

And the photographs had a purpose.

They were deliberately commercial, made to be useful in the world. We wanted to create imagery of such quality, breadth and accessibility that businesses everywhere could draw upon it. A small enterprise might reach for the same visual language as a multinational. Our photographs would find their way into countless other people's endeavours, helping them communicate, persuade, explain and flourish.

There was something deeply satisfying in this. The images were not made to remain precious objects, nor to depend upon the reputation of their makers. They were made to travel, to be borrowed into other people's stories, to acquire meanings and purposes we could never entirely foresee.

Beauty and usefulness were not opposing ambitions. Each could give something to the other.

OJO became an internationally successful photographic collection and was acquired by Getty Images in 2012.

Caia Image followed, carrying the collaborative spirit into another chapter. We expanded into moving image and increasingly ambitious productions across Europe, Africa, America and Australia.

Looking back, I remember the photographs, certainly, but perhaps even more vividly the experience of building something together. The extraordinary combination of trust, friction, generosity and determination required to sustain a shared enterprise.

Photography is so often imagined as a solitary pursuit: one eye, one camera, one decisive moment.

These years taught me another possibility.

That individuality need not be diminished by cooperation.

That ambition can become something generous.

And that the work of making something together can be as meaningful as the thing made.