The Project

 

Lovers on Film (2020 – ongoing) is a curated photographic project by photographer Jack Gunn, presenting thousands of photographs submitted by couples from over 100 countries worldwide. The exhibition explores intimacy, tenderness, and the quiet, often unseen moments of romantic relationships. Photographed primarily in private or domestic spaces, the images focus on closeness, vulnerability, and the small gestures that define being in love.

 

Lovers on Film was created in London during the summer of 2020's Covid Lockdown. The project operates through an open submission model, inviting couples to submit their own photographs. This approach creates a collective, global portrait of love that is both deeply personal and quietly universal. Rather than idealising romance, Lovers on Film is interested in honesty, presence, and attention – existing somewhere between documentary and portraiture. Analogue photography is fundamental to the project. Working with film introduces slowness, limitation, and uncertainty into the process – qualities that closely mirror the emotional landscape of intimate relationships themselves. Each photograph exists as a physical object, shaped by time, chance, and care, resisting the immediacy and disposability of digital imagery. In an era increasingly shaped by AI and image simulation, Lovers on Film feels even more important. These images exist as records of something that genuinely happened, preserving love as lived rather than imagined.

As part of the submission process, couples are invited to share more than just their photograph. Each entry includes the location where the image was made and a brief story reflecting on the moment captured. The stories, often intimate and tender, have become a meaningful aspect of the project. This webpage brings together a selection of these contributions, allowing the voices of the couples themselves to sit alongside their photographs.

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Amber O'Reilly
Australia

We live in fleeting moments, but we linger on film. In these spaces – intimate, quiet and together – a photo becomes more than an image; it is time encapsulated. Here, we find the room to celebrate, to reflect or even mourn. There is a profound beauty in the realisation that this pull we feel is a resonance shared by millions. Across the world, we are all looking at ‘our' person, feeling that same warmth and wonder. While time is liquid, film is the vessel that allows us to catch it – proving that though our stories are our own, the language of love is one we all speak.

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Brody Campbell
USA

I just got my new medium format camera and couldn't wait to use it, so on a regular day around the house, I wanted to capture our mundane on film.

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Domenico Sciaraffa
Italy

Shot in 2021, I just started working as a teacher in Italy. My partner was doing a PhD in France and she came to visit... and brought me Covid! We were forced to stay home for a few weeks and during this time photography and creative process were our daily healings. Stuck inside together.

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Emmanuel Galindo
Mexico

That night I took my Nikon FM to my boyfriend’s apartment in Tlatelolco, Mexico. At that time, he was 22 years old and I was 25; although we had been together for some time, that night was our first time having sex and also the first night we slept together.
Shortly after, I taught him how to take analogue photography. I gave him a roll and a camera and until now he continues to take pictures. I took that picture in his bathroom, after brushing our teeth. I think we already sensed what would
happen in his room. They were really beautiful and special moments. Everything was calm, smooth and we never lost sight of each other’s eyes. After 4 years, he and I are no longer together, but we remember each other with great affection.

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Hazier
Iran

Love is forbidden for queer people in my country, Iran. Homosexuality is criminalized and denied under dominant religious, cultural, and social beliefs. For many of us, love is forced to exist quietly, in private spaces, in glances and moments not meant to be seen.

 

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community in Iran, I have learned that loving can carry risk, and that being photographed together can feel like an act of trust.

This photo captures a moment when love existed fully, even if the relationship itself has changed.

Still, I believe a day will come when we can hold the hand of the person we love and kiss in the street without fear. Not because love is victorious or heroic, but because it persists, even in darkness. Especially in times like these, when many Iranians are living through uncertainty and hardship, we need love.

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Iluuna Sorensen
Greenland

We met in 2021, both from Nuuk Greenland but spent our first year together as a long-distance couple. This picture was taking during our summer vacation treasuring every warm day we had together. Today we both live together in Copenhagen, loving being able to go to bed and wake up next to each other.

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Roberto Costa
Italy

This was our last photo, and we knew it while he took it.

 

Jonathan Martínez de León
Cuba

My girlfriend and I met through a mutual friend 7 months ago, and since then, I’ve been able to understand what it feels like to be truly loved. It’s been 7 months of learning a lot – the good and the bad, and so much love. I’ve never met anyone with such a pure heart; sometimes I think what I’m going through isn’t real. Ara came into my life for a reason. I feel like, in one way or another,
it’s fate. I needed someone like her to heal so many things, and I couldn’t be more grateful. We both have an unconditional love for art in all its forms, and we connect so much because of that. The photos were a genuine act of love; they were taken at home, in our comfort zone, where we love each other best. I love those photos because they were taken in moments of pure and genuine happiness. In conclusion, love all you can, no matter what. There will always be someone who connects with your way of loving.

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Lania and Mani Reshad
Iran

We dedicate this photograph to the lovers of Iran

To those who resisted, who endured, and to those whose lives were taken under repression. While we held each other in safety and light, many loved under watchful eyes, under fear, under the constant threat of violence.

While we made images of tenderness, others were defending their right simply to exist, to speak, to stand together in the street. These photographs carry that contradiction with them. They are offered as a gesture of memory and solidarity – for the couples separated, for the hands that could not hold on, for the lives interrupted too soon. May love outlast fear, and may remembrance outlast silence.

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Lilia Carlone
Italy

I don't have much to tell about this photo, I was totally, tremendously, completely in love. I was woken up by the sun rising during a warm summer night, he was asleep and I stayed there watching him, I was hopeful and I never thought that could end. I am so grateful to take these moments on film because I can remember them exactly as they were, with the happy ending it deserved. Sometimes we take things for granted that seem eternal, indissoluble, and wonderful at that moment. In hindsight, I wish I had observed it longer, I wish I had woken up at every dawn after and before, so as not to miss a single minute of that calm.

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Juancho Venezeo Llorente and Jerah Mungcal
Philippines

Before Juancho 'Jako' passed away, he wrote on the back of these developed photos a poem for Jerah.

I don't try
I don't have to try
to care about you.
Because it's already there,
Waiting, looking right at us,
Aching to burst out of my clumsy mouth.
It's as natural as breathing,
but my clumsy mouth and my bad writing
are one of the closest I'll ever get
to portraying those feelings for you.
I hope we meet again,
somewhere, somehow...
Under a lovelier sun.

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