Shot over several years, Sophie Ebrard’s personal project was approached with wit and tenderness, challenging public preconceptions of the world’s most profitable industry…
Rachel Segal Hamilton
GAZZMAN, the filmmaker behind Satan’s Whore, Fuck Club and Pussy Harvest, was not at all how Sophie Ebrard imagined a porn director would be. “He was normal: a family guy, very geeky, super nice. I think we clicked because we talked about cameras,” recalls the Swiss-French photographer. They met at a swingers’ party, where Ebrard was on the hunt for couples to take part in a project on nudity. When Gazzman invited her to visit one of his sets, she seized the chance. “His work is probably the most high-end you can find, there are only three or four like him. It’s for older people, aged 40 plus, people who still buy DVDs and pay for porn. The girls are beautiful, the locations are great. I was lucky to meet him.”
The project on nudity never happened. Instead, for four years, in between commercial jobs, Ebrard would head to sets in Scotland, Spain and the US, armed with her Pentax 67 Mark II, to capture life on Gazzman’s film sets. The resulting series, ‘It’s Just Love’, went on show in Japan this April at KG+, part of Kyotographie photography festival. It’s an artfully shot, surprisingly mellow take on an industry that’s often associated with sleaze and exploitation.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Ebrard says of her first time on set. “I thought that [porn actors] were from another galaxy. But I met normal people who happened to do that as a job. I felt I’d found the humanity and I wanted to bring that to the project.” Ebrard didn’t set out with a critical agenda. “It’s easy to take pictures of girls looking sad, post them on the internet and say, ‘This is the porn industry.’” But neither, she stresses, is she an advocate for porn. “This project is about trying to show what I experienced and saw on the sets that I’ve been on. You can find beauty if you look for it.”
In her day job as an advertising photographer, Ebrard’s clients include Adidas, Heineken and HSBC. But, while she enjoys commercial work, she “feeds her soul” with projects like this. “In a way I do [the commercial work] to finance my personal work. I love immersing myself in worlds I know nothing about. You’re like a chameleon trying to blend in and forget about who you are, and forget your own world. That’s when yo
