A photographer who took pictures of women right after they'd had sex explained the reason why she did this and what she was hoping to accomplish.
Patricia Tio explained to the British Journal of Photography that during the pandemic she would get a message from one of the women saying they were ready for a picture and she should come round.
Tio would then go to them and take their photo as soon as possible, with her subjects asked to change nothing about their appearance as she felt it would be a more honest depiction of female sexuality.
She said: "I wanted to create an honest and untampered representation.
Advert
"It’s not about being sexy or about underwear, nudity or trying to represent masturbation or orgasms because those are constantly exploited for male pleasure."
The photographer said she wanted to start an open discussion about female sexuality which she thought was lacking in her circle of friends.
Speaking to LADbible years later, she said one of the reasons she went ahead with it was one of her friends at university 'becoming more sexually active' but being 'really shy when talking about it'.
"She also didn't feel like she could masturbate. She didn't know how, she felt almost like ashamed for it, ad she wasn't comfortable talking about it with anyone," Tio explained.
"I started noticing a pattern with most of my friends were actually uncomfortable talking about anything deeper than 'I went on a date and we slept together'.
"That was as much as someone was willing to share."
With her images she wanted to capture a look at what that was like free of the influence of porn, objectification or hyper sexualisation, just an unadorned look at what the women in the pictures looked like after sex.
The photographer said many of the depictions of sex on TV, or the aftermath, didn't include realistic moments such as having to go and pee afterwards to avoid the risk of a UTI, and wanted to capture a more realistic portrait of women post-sex.
She said: "We have that vulnerable moment and at the end of it we have to go and take care of ourselves and remove ourselves from that situation.
"I really wanted to use that moment when you kind of leave and capture that because it's when you're questioning everything.
"Even if it's a partner that you've had for five years, females, they still have so much going on in their head and it's a vulnerable moment and you tend to cover up.
"I wanted to capture natural interactions. So not perhaps a girl that's like completely put herself head to toe in lingerie and try to really impress someone."
The women the photographer snapped included friends and family, and she had said she hoped their decision to participate 'made a difference' for them.
"Instead of being sexually confident and unfazed by the project, many of the women I photographed were uncomfortable and frightened of what family, friends, and society might think of their participation in such images," she had told the British Journal of Photography.
"Because of this, collaborating with them felt special, and I believe it made a difference for those involved and hopefully future viewers too."
Given the subject matter, she explained to LADbible it was 'kind of complicated' to talk to women about them being photographed, with her 'testing the waters' first but as she went on there were people she spoke to who 'wanted to be a part of it'.
She said: "It actually had a really big impact in my world with the people that surrounded me and the girls around me."
Tio took photos of the women who agreed to be pictured several times, and many of them 'wanted to do it again'.
However, others who agreed to be photographed asked not to be included in her work, but still wanted her to come round and photograph them.
"I even had some people being like, 'I want to be a part of it, but I don't want it to be published'. I was happy to do that even if there was no outcome," Tio explained.
For the photographer the most important thing was the women she pictured and how the images 'helped them to feel comfortable', and she also made sure the partner they'd just had sex understood what was happening and agreed to it.
"It changed me and it changed people around me too," she said.
"I'm friends still with a lot of the people that were involved. I can see even in how they interact with me and with themselves and their partners, that it did definitely cross some sort of wall.
"It kind of brought those walls down. I saw that in a lot of my friends in a big way after this project.
"At the end of the day, as an artist, if your project can touch at least one person and change someone's life, that's all you can ask for."
Topics: Art, Sex and Relationships, Community
Joe Harker