Photographer Andrea Martí has deliberately asked real couples to lock lips beneath retro club lighting to investigate a modern paradox: plenty of attractive people in the media, but little visible desire.
Staging intimacy in a vintage venue
The images were shot inside the Bethnal Green Working Mens Club, a converted social club in London now used for drag, burlesque and disco, and formed part of Martís series created while she was studying at the University of the Arts London. Martí worked with casting director Melisa Ozcolak to find the participants and chose to photograph real couples so she could capture an existing sense of familiarity and affection.
What the work asks of viewers
The series, which borrows its title from the 2021 viral essay "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny", is an attempt to reintroduce longing and sensual tension that Martí feels are increasingly absent from mainstream imagery. In conversation, she has linked the issue to wider cultural shifts among younger people — less sexual activity, aversion to dating and rising loneliness — themes that recur in contemporary research and commentary on Gen Z.
“Everyone has beautiful bodies in the media, but were seeing all these hot people and theres no tension here,”
Marti emphasises that she does not want to generalise about entire generations, noting that some communities remain sexually open. Yet she points to a pervasive culture of optimisation — tracking calories, curating careers and appearances — that, she suggests, leaves little space for what she calls "sensualism as an ideology."
Practical choices and research-led practice
Martis decision to use real couples came after early casting challenges and a desire to avoid staging intimacy with actors who might not convey genuine connection. She found participants through casting and campus outreach; the scenes were deliberately simple: couples kissing in dimmed, tinsel-lit surroundings to evoke both nostalgia and yearning.
- Location: Bethnal Green Working Mens Club, London
- Context: Graduate project at University of the Arts London
- Thematic focus: Desire, loneliness, media representation and optimisation culture
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Series title | Reference to 2021 essay "Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny" |
| Participants | Real couples located via casting director and campus outreach |
| Venue | Bethnal Green Working Mens Club |
The work forms part of a broader conversation in art and popular culture about how mediated perfection can dull emotional tension. For readers, the photographs invite reflection: how do contemporary pressures to optimise our lives affect the spontaneous, messy experience of desire?
For those interested in contemporary photography or the sociology of intimacy, Martís project offers a tightly observed, visually warm entry point into questions that many cultural commentators are still trying to answer.
