After discovering an essay by Raquel S. Benedict titled Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny, surrounding characters in film that may be presented in sexually suggestive ways but are not shown having or even talking about sex, Andrea started to think that there was even more ground for her photographic exploration of intimacy today, so she adopted Raquel’s essay title to frame her images: “I think it is an incredible title,” she shares, “one that was highly debated by my tutors, which only made me love it more.”
A big visual inspiration behind the series for Andrea was Tom Wood’s classic photographs of young people clubbing. When she first started researching the photographer, Andrea was confronted with the sad realisation that if she was to recreate Wood’s images today, the kinds of scenes he captured would probably have to be staged, as younger generations are increasingly missing out on in-person interactions, living chronically online. “My mum used to tell me how, back in her day, people would go to clubs and fall in love, and at the end of the night, the DJ would play slow music” Andrea says, “I don’t think that happens anymore.” Harnessing this nostalgia for a time she never experienced, the photographer wanted the final series to reimagine this current rise in physical isolation and declining intimacy by staging an alternative, utopic reality in which closeness and desire are visible in young people today.
All of this making out was, according to Andrea, a bit of a challenge to orchestrate. “I’d never done something that required so much pre-production and planning,” she says. “Finding couples was definitely the hardest part. It was incredibly difficult to align schedules, get people to commit and communicate my vision without coming across like a perv.” From putting up posters around uni, to messaging people on Instagram and even trying to cast some actors herself, finding participants was a logistical nightmare. “It didn’t help that most of my friends are single as well,” she says. After exhausting all her options Andrea decided to reach out to people that work in casting for help and she came to collaborate with Melissa Ozcolack on a final line up of couples willing to snog for the camera.