Doug Lockard was born and raised in Louisiana and has since lived and worked throughout North America and the world. He studied photography at Atlanta's Southeastern Center for the Arts. His travels have included a wide diversity of subject matter, ranging from urban environments such as London, Bangkok, and Singapore, to photographic expeditions into the jungles of Sumatra, pristine beaches of Phi Phi Island, pictographs in the Canadian Quetico, and the refugee camps of the 'Long Neck' tribes of Burma. In 2001, after a quarter century of travel and adventure, and more than 10,000 images in his archive, Doug selected Greenville, South Carolina as the place to establish his home and gallery, and is now active in the Greenville/Spartanburg arts community, where he is an active member of the Metropolitan Arts Council and serves on the board of Upstate Visual Arts. He is currently involved in two book projects; one in collaboration with Doug and Katey Bostick on the history of stained glass in Charleston, and in a follow-up visit to Cambodia and Vietnam in 2004/2005 he hopes to complete his work on 'The Face of Asia', a book capturing his thoughts and images on his travels in the Orient. In 2005 he plans to begin an expedition to Central American where he'll photograph Mayan ruins.

'One of the realities of life that I've come to accept is this; regardless of where my journeys have taken me around the world, no matter how remote or seemingly exotic to my eyes, everywhere is home for someone. In the endless day-to-day struggle, the samsara of life--from the upstate of South Carolina to the jungles of Sumatra-we all have a propensity to take the uniqueness and beauty of our homes, our life experience, even each other--for granted.

I believe every day is perfect, but I recognize how difficult it is to allow that thought, that philosophy, to percolate up through the daily mediocrity. My photography developed as a mental discipline, a means of opening my own awareness to these extraordinary moments, these extraordinary images, as proof. Romancing life is not the denial of the mundane, but a celebration of the extraordinary. We all have the ability to elevate the mundane to the extraordinary simply in the way we 'see'. The proof is in my photography.

And so, it has become somewhat of a spiritual endeavor for me, this pursuit of awareness, this joy of discovery of the sensuous beauty in each and every day of my life. This gallery is about sharing that vision and that joy with you.

Because my goal is to capture the perfect moment, not create it, I work mostly in color transparencies; slide film, without filters or dark room technique. You see what I saw. I call my work 'limited edition photography', simply because it is. Getting to know you, the sharing, the telling of the story behind the image-another way of creating a 'moment' in our lives -- is the motivation for sharing my work. When you find something that moves you in one of my images, something that defines an aspect of you, a 'moment' is created where we are 'seeing' the world through a common portal. In those moments, my vision as an artist is manifest.'