In a clean room in shades of white and grey, a woman leans over to paint her toenails peeking through peep-toe stilettos next to an extra large package of Scottex toilet paper.
This is a moment captured in Sophie Ebrard’s series It’s Just Love. The U.K. Photographer, who is best known for her advertising work with big names like Adidas and Rolex, decided to take an intimate look behind the scenes on the porn sets of director Gazzman. She sought to step away from the contrived glitz and glamour of the finished product to reveal moments of loneliness, humor, camaraderie and contemplation on the sets of porn films.
The project began when Ebrard met director Gazzman at a swinger’s party during a search for inspiration for her next project;
“It was the first time I went to such a party, and also the first time I witnessed someone having sex in front of me, and I was really surprised by how beautiful it looked. It was such an eye opener I thought, wow, this is amazing, this is gorgeous. And I really wanted to photograph that beauty. As if it was faith, that night I met Gazzman, a porn director from the UK, who invited me over to shoot some photos on one of his sets two weeks later,” Ebrard told Creators Project.
Her budding friendship with director Gazzman, allowed Ebrard entrance into a world that she had never encountered before. Coming to the industry with fresh eyes, she observed that the actors were not that different from everyone else;
“When you’re on set together, you start forming a small community—you eat together, you share a room, you become friends. That, in the end, is what I hope that these photographs communicate: the idea that even something like porn, when done professionally, can be beautiful and authentic.”
These moments of authenticity are what shine through in Ebrard’s photographs, which are in turn intimate and voyeuristic. You get the sense of a close knit community in the stage-lit rooms, in moments between the connections of bodies, when actors chat in bathrobes or iron shirts between takes. Ebrard also intentionally left the wires, riggings, and technical trappings involved in making porn in the frames. She hopes to show it is more than just videotaping sex, but a finished product that involves teamwork and equipment.
From these experiences Ebrard has drawn her own conclusions about the porn industry; sleeping and eating on set and having conversations about the hopes and dreams of actors, and how they got into the industry. She has come to see it as a job like any other, with it’s own unique challenges and rewards.
Ebrard paints a uniquely multifaceted portrait of the porn industry. Although she admits that knowledge of the industry as a whole cannot be gleaned from time spent on the sets of only one director, the understanding that she got of a life in porn was much different than its vilified portrayal in the media.
Like this article? Check out Nadia Lee Cohen’s 100 Naked Women, or a recent photo book about Young Love.
