Although they avoid out-and-out porn like the plague, sex and culture e-zine Nerve.com has nonetheless published a photoset of Adult stars Seymore Butts and Mari Possa doing what they get paid to do.
Of course, this isn’t Seymore Butts gonzo style. The shoot, titled “Off The Set,” takes a candid, intimate look at Butts and Possa off set. It’s shot by mainstream photographer Paul Sarkis, who is a frequent contributor to CMJ, New Music Journal, and Nerve.
Sarkis, who has been shooting still life and actors for 20 years, shot the pair in a New York hotel room in the midst of an East Coast press and signing tour. His original intent was to depict the couple in photos away from their adult entertainment world, but when the couple unexpectedly got intimate he kept snapping and that plan soon went out the window.
“I really hadn’t planned on it becoming a sexual shoot,” Sarkis said. “I actually had this idea in my mind for a while before I heard of Timothy Greenfield Sanders’ book… it’s been way too long that people in the press have chosen to discount people in the adult industry just because they work there, and I’m interested in showing that these are just ordinary people working in an unusual business. There is, by and large, a lot more to these people than what is portrayed in the work that they do.
“Originally I had planned on doing some portrait shots and some fine art nudes of Mari as well as Seymore and Mari together, but actual copulation wasn’t part of the plan… then again it wasn’t the first time I’ve photographed couples together.”
Sarkis pitched the photoset to Nerve, with predictable results. They didn’t want pictures of a porn couple having sex, that is, until they saw what Sarkis had captured.
“What was so striking about it was it wasn’t planned – there was no director and no script, it was just two people with honest chemistry coming together in a very natural and spontaneous way. When I picked up the camera I was really just trying to capture the essence of the moment of the genuine attraction and emotion between these two people,” Sarkis said.
The photos are available as premium content here.
