Jo Broughton London, United Kingdom

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Broughton’s mission is photographer as recorder; her skill is the ability to present tangible evidence of the emotional within human experience. These calm expositions are like the people Broughton works with – quiet, possibly vulnerable, but with a steely individuality.

In Empty Porn Sets, by recording the space left behind after the human activity, the work makes a strong statement against a voyeuristic or judgemental look at the processes of making porn, withdrawing from any moral discourse. Instead, the emptiness has the effect of mainlining emotional reverb into the space.

These calm expositions are like the people Broughton works with – quiet, possibly vulnerable, but with a steely individuality, such as her series Virgins, respondees to an advert in Time Out magazine. The uncannily common gaze shared by the women says they are apprehensive about being declared, and would rather be left to blossom in their private worlds, but revealed by Broughton their conviction is the magic she brings out.

”Generously curious, unjudgingly celebratory, confidently uncertain, Jo Broughton's photographs…remind me of the letter by Chekhov in which he said that it is sometimes much better to ask the right questions than to have the right answers. “ Simon Watney

Text by Lucy Granville 2016

www.jobroughton.com