In 1985, Monica Moore published a now-famous study that covertly observed, analyzed, and catalogued nonverbal facial expressions & gestures exhibited by more than 200 random women—commonly labeled as “flirting behaviors.” While there had been studies that looked into female mating preferences, their selecting mechanisms and patterns remains undefined (Moore 238). Moore’s study were to document and describe this ensemble of visual & tactile displays of courting signals.

On the next installation of the ‘On Intimacy’ series, a small research photography project was done to visualize intimacy within a romantic setting. Based on a 1985 study published in the Journal of Ethology and Sociobiology, the project tries to reverse-engineer and capture the nonverbal courtship patterns catalogued in the paper, through modern photography.

While the cultural relevancy of these courtship patterns are indisputable—being the typical visual language of modern romantic films—it is important to contextualize that these cues occurs in real‑life settings only. In reality, the pervasiveness of digital dating and its multimodal property (Ramirez et al. 102) had driven (digital) natives to develop new norms & patterns of courtship as a response to the online dating discourse and internet milieus.