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Porn Sets Are Beautiful (When Nobody's Home)

Photographer Jo Broughton paid for her studies by cleaning out a porn studio, and was rewarded with intimate moments inside places you'd only imagine.
Empty Porn Sets (2016), Jo Broughton. All images courtesy the photographer

To earn some extra money in college, you can work in the hospitality industry, or babysit the children of neighbors. The chances of paying for your studies as a janitor on porn sets are a lot smaller, yet that's exactly what photographer Jo Broughton did. To finance her education at London's Royal College of Art, she spent the ends of her days ​​cleaning studios that once contained some of the wildest scenes on film.

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It might not be the ideal student job, but it did make an excellent subject for a photo series. Fittingly titled Empty Porn Sets, Broughton's resulting collection of images falls somewhere between interior design photographs and those of crime scenes.

The variety of settings—a school, a hospital, a bed of balloons—don't immediately belie their pornographic characters, but little details, like left-behind stilettos and tubes of lube, do. These are striking images that remind us that porn is made in the real world. Make no mistake, it's confrontational—and that's what makes Empty Porn Sets so strong.

Check out more from the series, below:

Head over to Jo Broughton's website for more.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Creators Project Netherlands. 

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