jo broughton snaps empty porn sets
British shutterbug Jo Broughton was a teenage art student in the ‘90s when she turned up for work experience at what turned out to be a porn studio (thanks to an awkward administrative error at her college). She spent the next few years doing odd jobs for the studio – even living there for a time – while processing her mixed feelings about the pornographic world through behind-the-scenes journal entries, drawings and photographs.
While working after-hours as a cleaner, she snapped photos of the empty sets, such as a hospital bed, a classroom and a pink Christmas tree, which were designed with unexpected precision by a fellow art student. Without the actors in frame, the sets look pretty innocent – and almost cartoonish – until you spot the sexy stuff.
“At first they have the appearance of a show-home in questionable taste,” Jo says. “Then you look again and see the clues... a bottle of lubricant, a dildo, lights at the edge of the frame, glimpses of the studio beyond. It slowly becomes apparent that these are fantasy landscapes, rude pictures without the nudity.”
Jo eventually moved on from the studio, but the lessons she learned there stayed with her. “I learned humanity,” she says. “And that, more than anything, has helped me in my ability to take photos.”
Check out more of Jo’s Empty Porn Sets series here.
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