Last summer, a couple contacted 27-year-old Parisian photographer Roxy Hervé on social media with a simple, intriguing request: Would she be willing to step into their apartment and photograph them in bed?
Hervé agreed. The experience was so fulfilling, the photographer turned it into a photo series called “Lovers,” which captures couples in various states of intimacy, though never in the midst of actual sex.
“The project is mostly about intimacy,” she told HuffPost. “I capture those little intimate, slightly sexual moments that no ones sees but are always there.”
To get the couples to relax in an admittedly high-pressure situation, Hervé gives them a simple prompt: Describe, in as great detail as possible, the moment you realized you liked each other. The question is so sweet and disarming, the couples usually open up to her.
“A lot of the trust between me and the lovers comes before the actual shoot,” she said. “I spend quite a bit of time explaining to the couple what the project is about. They need to understand that there is nothing pornographic about it.”
In one “how we met” story, a man shared what it was like falling for his girlfriend while on a train:
I felt this overwhelming sense of endearment and affection for her as I watched her pull funny faces at the child sitting besides me. She continued pulling faces at this child for a good 15 minutes. They had this quiet connection across the train. I watched them giggle at each other in happy playfulness. At that moment, I felt a future between us. She could take care of me.
In their “Lovers” photo, the pair lie entwined, the woman wrapped up in her boyfriend’s arms.
As with all the other pairs she’s photographed ― around 10 so far ― Hervé gave minimal direction to the couple.
“I usually let them cuddle in bed and the moment I like a position they’re in, I ask them to freeze so I can take a picture,” she explained. “I’m working with analog so they can’t roll around all the time. Otherwise, all my shots would be blurry.”
Hervé, who’s based in Paris and London, is currently looking for more couples to feature and has set up an email account for interested parties to reach out. She hopes to include couples of all orientations, ages, races and sizes.
“I hope this project shows that we’re all fairly similar in our intimate moments, whether you’re 20 or 85, with one lover or several,” she said. “We all become one in the same ways.”
“I love taking these kind of pictures, where the feet just appear. You can tell a lot about what’s happening by the position.”
“When I asked about the moment the woman fell for her partner, she said: ‘His eyes were staring into mine. There was a long silence between us that made the red in my cheeks come out and my heartbeat was racing. This sensation of levitation was in me.’”
“This woman knew she was falling for her partner when she watched him take a bath. ‘He was in the bath, scared and I just started to wash him. As if he was a child I had to take care of.’”
“This photo captures a couple merging, their bodies tangling together until they become one.”
“One of women described the moment she fell for her partner like this: ‘I turned around and she was there. She had a drink in her hand; she was drinking out of a straw. Our eyes kind of like locked, she looked at me, we made eye contact and it felt like a very, very long time. We held it. I just felt like whole, my blood was going crazy.’”
“It’s perhaps the simplest photo here, but that’s what makes it beauty: that simple touch.”
