“With porn shoots you always see tits, fanny... I mean you never see anything like this. You see the big space in the background…and yeah, you can see the top of the girl’s head but you can’t see fuck all. That one, it’s just….that’s the one that stuck in my mind. That’s why I think they’re awesome.”

A long time before French photographer Sophie Ebrard turned her Amsterdam home into an immersive gallery space, before her project of following a porn director around the world had been painstakingly curated into an exhibition, she thought she’d test out her shots on the biggest critics of all: the performers themselves.

And so it was Loulou Petite, with her disarming smile and unstoppable enthusiasm, who gave that review. No airs. No graces. No holds barred. Chattering away in her bright pink hoodie, she was refreshing, astute and wholly unjaded. Because she’d found someone who could see her industry for what it really is, not just how it’s marketed to the masturbating masses.

Ebrard, the woman behind striking campaigns for brands as diverse as Rolex and Adidas, has always stubbornly made time for her personal projects, a series of visual investigations that have taken her around the world and into some eye-opening situations.

So it stands to reason that it was at a swingers party that she met Gazzman: she, charmingly out of her depth but looking for couples to participate in a project, he, the affable Scottish porn director in his element. The two talked cameras, clicked swiftly, and Sophie landed herself an invitation too good to refuse. A few weeks later, she found herself behind the scenes of his next film on a run-down LA lot, becoming unofficial photographer, psychiatrist and lube holder on the way.

“Ebrard’s photographs attempt to show the whole picture. Not just the deliberate inclusion of the cables, cameras and technical trappings of the locations, but the complex mindsets and sheer humanity of the people involved”

“It’s Just Love” was born, with Ebrard following Gazzman on shoots for four years, her aim to uncover the stories behind the wipe-clean kicks that usually come from pornography. The resulting images, all shot on medium-format analogue film, have very little sexual gratification in them at all: this is porn turned on its head in a blaze of long shots, private moments and elegant composition.

We see the starlet painting her neon toenails on a shiny on-set sofa; the poignant ‘Broken Doll’ tattoo on a forearm entangled in a choreographed threesome; the naked stud ironing his shirt, alone. The images are in turns funny and pointed, sad and human. They might be the opposite of the soft-focus cartoonish glamour that convention dictates, but that’s exactly why the actors are proud to be in these shots: they’re a higher brow take on a scene so often viewed as cheap and dirty. A breath of fresh air in an industry tougher than most.

Porn is a world where friendships wither through infighting and your once doting family sweep your career under the carpet despite your fame and fortune. Where you grow up fast and you can’t turn back. Where CVs don’t exist. And the world treats you as either a novelty act or a dirty little secret.

It’s hard for the actors to move on. And it’s incredibly unfair, considering that porn is now more public and accessible than ever, ripe for discussion around the water cooler for the cool. Its superstars, once hidden away, now grace the pages of hipster magazines and win adulation from the fashion pack, yet society keeps them at a safe distance in their pixelated cages: they’re great to watch, as long as they don’t get too close. And as long as your girlfriend doesn’t catch you.