Photos of porn sets after everybody's gone home

'As a cleaner I saw the sets in the cold light of day and picking up and cleaning the mess was a bit like being in a crime scene.'

Some great photography requires months of preparation and creative revision, some is blessed by circumstance.

Jo Broughton was holding down a job as a cleaner at a porn studio in order to help fund her creative projects, but little did she know it would end up becoming part of them. Back in 2001 she started photographing the aftermath on the sets when all was quiet.

Without the pounding bodies to distract, the images show the perfunctory design of the sets - poor simulacra of bedrooms, jungle camps, classrooms and (weirdly) ice caves.

At times they look as though they could be sets for shopping channels, until you notice a dildo lying idly on a shelf.

“These are playgrounds of cheapish fantasy which are left like historical documents to the sex act,” Jo’s website states. “At first, they have the appearance of a show-home in questionable taste. The colours are vivid and the structure at once basic and commercial looking.”

She added of her unusual job: “At times I struggled with what went on in the space, about the objectification of women... I hid my association with the porn industry like a guilty secret but without it I may not have been able to realise my ambitions.

“To this day I cannot say I am comfortable with the porn industry, but I do now realise that there are two sides to every coin, light and dark.”

“As a cleaner I saw the sets in the cold light of day and picking up and cleaning the mess was a bit like being in a crime scene. Dealing with the inevitable bodily fluids made me feel my own humanity and then the vunerability of the models who had performed for the camera that day.

“In the end, though, I was learning my craft, trying to understand light and how to photograph really well.”

Jo’s next project sees her taking portraits of people who feel they are related to the Royal Family blood line. If you are such a person, she would love for you to get in contact here.