The following is the first half of an interview between art critic Jean Wainright and photographer Jo Broughton, whose work is featured to accompany Astro Liu's original essay: "I Kissed Dating Goodbye..." for The Fever Dream Club.
Explore more of Jo's work here.
© Jean Wainright 2008 and © Jo Broughton 2008
JW: I'd like to start by asking why porn sets?
JB: Well the subject kind of found me many years ago. I was doing a foundation art course in Thurrock, Essex and I was sent on work experience in London. I thought what I was being sent to was a glamorous fashion shoot when in actual fact I walked into a studio in Hoxton to a nurses set being set up and a girl walking out of a changing room wearing suspenders and stockings, the full monty kit. Quite an abrupt Yorkshireman approached me and asked if I'd ever seen a “fanny up front” and I squeaked “No” and he replied “Well today's your lucky day”. I didn't just work for him as work experience for two weeks, I actually went on to drop out of college and work for him for two years, as his photographic assistant. I was known as “Jo student” which I'm still very much known there today by that name.
For a long time I had quite a problem with what was going on there, I was quite conflicted. I was green as grass; I'd never ever walked into something like that before. He actually wrote my reference for Kent Institute of Art and Design where I studied for my BA and I lied and said he was a portrait photographer so I got into my degree on a big fib, when I'd actually spent two years as a pornographic photographer. I suppose it always stayed with
me and I always stayed in contact with him because I had this connection with someone who, at the time, had taken me in and taught me photography and shown me a side of life I'd never seen before. I suppose because I come from an odd-bod of a family, in a strange way it became my family. It was very contradictory in some respects to have this space where I was safe and had a connection to people that were “family” and yet it's perceived as very unsafe to other people: its a safe industry because they work very safely but it isn't your desired environment, I wouldn't desire it for my child to work as a pornographic model. My conflicting emotions stayed with me and I hid it very well, where I'd been and what I'd been doing, for a long time.
JW: I'd like to ask – what was the job you were supposed to be doing in the first place? Was it photographer’s assistant? What were these shoots?
JB: Well actually they were probably very much like the fashion shoots out there today, from David LaChappelle and many other fashion photographers, because you're talking about twenty years ago. I was seventeen ; I'm in my thirties now. The rules of engagement, shall we say, on set were as follows. It had to be a flaccid penis and it couldn't enter the hole and if there were tongues the tongues couldn't touch. So I suppose my job was to paint the set, make lots and lots of tea and to sweep up. I was just the dogsbody, to put up the lights; always give Steve a "pop", meaning I'd have to dump the power on the light packs for him to do the light test. I had to put up the poly boards and all the normal stuff you do in a studio with the content of a sexual nature, which actually was very tame and quite tongue in cheek now. And it is very different now actually, going back to take pictures
and waiting whilst the shoots are going on, Its actually quite hard to see because there is penetration now, there's anal penetration with dildos and whatever. It's quite hard actually.
JW: This is really interesting because you couldn't leave the subject alone. You went back to shoot the porn sets with a medium format camera, with studio lights, these really interesting sets but emptied of people. You've given a graphic description of the acts that happened, but there are no acts in these shots. What was that decision about?
JB: That was another thing, another career in the porn industry. I left my degree and I went to live in the studio because I was in between homes, I'd graduated, I had no where to live, I couldn't go back to my parents' because of the family situation there so I actually went to live at the studio. So whilst I was working for the Observer Newspaper as the picture editors assistant, I went home to sleep on a porn set. So I was getting up in the mornings and sleeping on whatever set was left and then going to work. After a while I found somewhere to live but I started to take pictures of the studio, snap shots, I suppose that's where the whole thing started. I think also David La’ Chappelle's work was coming out, artistic visual imagery was emerging so it wasn't seen as so evil, this subject. When I was working as an assistant we would get phone calls all day, somehow people had got hold of the studios number and they would scream obscenities down the phone and make threats. People were repelled and absolutely disgusted by the subject of porn; you just didn't mention that you worked in the porn industry. So in order not to be tainted by that brush, I didn't dare mention it when I was at The Observer because you just didn't knew how people would take it, take what you did. I think by the time I got tot he Royal College of Art
because I left the Observer and went to the RCA to do my MA, that's when attitudes really started to become more open to pornography, it almost became fashionable. It's funny because I remember Steve going “Oh my God, I'm fashionable” and Rankin phoned him up and asked to be in a Benny Hill fashion shoot with him chasing girls around because he knew Rankin, he used to play football with him in the park. Also, my friendship with Steve. I think the sets came about because I was discussing it with Steve. I always make work about experiences and what I've known but I'd never gone there with this pornographic experience because I was quite embarrassed for a time and just cautious the reaction of the outside world. Also, I was scared it would ruin my career if I did mention it because I wanted to be a photographic artist. So by the time I'd got to the Royal College of Art and made work I was still always visiting Steve once a week for an evening, and I became his cleaner. So I'd had these conflicting issues about these models seen as meat and I was doing all this feminist work and then I became Steve's cleaner every two weeks. I became this... I don't know how to describe it, this Igor character, cleaning up after someone. But also, I felt more humanistic towards the models, the industry and suddenly I started becoming more comfortable with it myself. I started to see this more human aspect because I'm seeing bodily fluids and I'm washing things and I'm in contact with almost what the untouchable is. You know, washing dildos and whatever, you're there, at that point. And suddenly I started to laugh and see the funny side of it and going in and putting the radio on and seeing the set week after week after week, it would change. It made me laugh because you see the set, there's so much work that goes into those sets and yet it’s still the same subject; tits and arse.
JW: What do you mean so much work? In the construction, the painting?
JB: Yeah.
JW: We're looking now at the G.I. Jane set so what you can see are trees, sand bags...
JB: Camouflage nets, boxes and water bottles and the helmet, the bullets she had around her waist.
JW: So G.I. Jane would appear in this scenario, leave and then you would photograph the set?
JB: Yes.
JW: Can we also talk structure? Because you let the audience see the set, and then see that it is not real, which is an important point about the work.
JB: Yeah it's almost like I'm letting the audience in to see what I saw and also to take the power out of it almost. It is to say this is false, which I suppose pornography is, it's false. I like the fact that there's a brick holding up the poly-board that reflects the light, the
ambiance coming in, the floor boards coming in. For me it’s really important to have those elements, also it shows humanistic elements of imperfections. Because in the magazines that its published in that would all be cut off and straightened and it would all be very glossy, so that was important. Also, I wanted to show the space I had this relationship with, that was important to me as well. This space doesn't really know what's going on, a table doesn't know it's a table, a porn set doesn't know it’s a porn set and that's almost what I was trying to do.
JW: I wanted to talk about this idea of seductiveness in the work. We're looking now at various images that have luscious pinks, silk sheets, a pink tablecloth, a decorative Christmas tree, the shadows on the wall; it's all very seductive and lovely and belies what has happened in this space. Can we talk about the way you've photographed that, the way you've shown the light flooding the spaces and picking out all these different sensual fabrics?
JB: The sensual fabrics and the props are put there by the photographer but I kind of wait... For them they shoot it with the blinds down so you have no ambient input whereas for me it's really important that the ambient light comes in. Otherwise I'm using Steve’s lighting and it's just me recording something. But I always wait for the ambient to hit. I think that's part of my recapturing the love of the studio, coming home to the studio after a days work in the summer after I graduated and living at the studio, I would always see the
ambient light hit certain points of the studio and bring it alive in a different way. I have kind
of always kept that feel, that vibe, that tension in and wanting light and the shadows to be in is also my personal interaction with the space. Also, not what many people get to see the sets properly because even the models are in and out, it's a job for them, they're not looking at the set particularly they just do the job then they get out. So I kind of get this still, chaotic space, I walk into that.
JW: What's also interesting is the signs of activity left in the space, it's very subtle. Can we talk a little bit about that? What would you have not photographed? Would you have removed anything? Changed anything apart from the lighting? Or are these a real representation of when the people walk off set and leave it?
JB: Yeah they just fling their clothes off and leave them in heaps and the lubrication is always in the corner, not far away. I have to get to it before the staff that work at the studio because they normally try and clean it up and I just run to try and get there before they get their hands on it. Yeah, there's a kind of fight between us because they're still worried about what people will see and I suppose I’m worried about what people won’t see. But no, there’s nothing I’d edit out.
© Jean Wainright 2008 and © Jo Broughton 2008
*Interview and images shared with The Fever Dream Club by the artist, Jo Broughton.
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