Though at first glance these photos look like stills from the strangers kissing video that went viral, in actuality this series was created even before that video was shot. Last summer, photographer Ben Lamberty took a spontaneous photo of a couple kissing and the photo turned out to be, in his words, “so cool” that he decided he needed to make a series out of it. The photos would eventually land in the December 2013 issue of a German publication called Zeit Magazine. The passionate images of two people kissing were paired with lines from famous songs like this one from The Beatles circa 1967: “All you need is love, all you need is love, all you need is love, love, love is all you need.”
After he first came up with the concept, Ben asked his friends to volunteer. Some of them were real couples while others were just good friends. As you can tell, a few of them dabbled in modeling but, according to the photographer, “all of them are creative characters.” Ben sat back as a quiet observer, hoping they’d forget he was in the same room. His goal was to capture strong emotional moments.
When asked about the whole experience, Ben said that “It was interesting to see how the different couples reacted. It seemed to be more challenging for the ‘real’ couples because it was rather intimate for them than for the friends who kissed ‘just for fun.’ All in all, we all had a blast creating these pictures.”
