Culture
A Peek Inside Brazilian 'Love Motels'
These sanctuaries for the sex-deprived shed light on the various ways people find space for intimacy.
In Brazil, where young people tend to live in pretty close quarters with mom, dad, and other members of their families until they get married, it isn’t easy to get some privacy with a romantic partner. But it’s possible—at “love motels.” These are sometimes-seedy, sometimes hilariously lavish sanctuaries for the sex-deprived.
The Dutch art director Vera van de Sandt had heard of these motels during her travels to Brazil. She was intrigued by all the shapes and sizes they came in, and wanted to see what they were like from the inside. In 2014, she read that some in Rio de Janeiro were being converted into boring old regular hotels for the 2016 Olympics. Before they were all gone, she and the photographer Jur Oster set off to document them.