Photographer Jo Broughton Documents the Interior Design of Porn Sets

Bright pink girls’ bedrooms, a physics classroom, and a foxhole in the middle of a jungle — all empty. It is only upon closer inspection that the viewer notices odd objects at the edges of the photo: hastily flung underwear and heels, a dildo, a bottle of lube.

These are the curious settings portrayed in a series of work by British photographer Jo Broughton called Empty Porn Sets, which was shot over a decade, from when she unknowingly signed on as a photography assistant for pornographer Steve Colby, up until Colby’s retirement in 2007. The result is an intimate study of a fetishistic approach to interior design in porn productions which has since been entirely lost in the ensuing digital age of widely-accessible and instantly available online porn. For Broughton herself, although “for a long time I had quite a problem with what was going on there, I was quite conflicted,” the series is a reminder of the close-knit family that she found within Colby’s porn studio. Check out a selection of photos from Empty Porn Sets above.