“Known territories feel good,” says photographer Sofiya Loriashvili as she returns to Japan to once again photograph Tokyo’s love hotels. Her previous series, 31 Days in Japan, explored her perspective, as an outsider, of the tension between control and surrender in the city’s erotic spaces and wider society. Now she returns with a continuation of that work, 30 Days in Japan – named simply after the length of her visa.

The project continues her exploration of BDSM as both a literal and symbolic structure within Tokyo. “BDSM is a form of restraint that, to me, reflects certain aspects of Japanese society, as well as the tension between the omnipresence of sexual imagery and strict censorship,” she says. “I’m always impressed by those billboards, posters, ranges of champagne girls out in the streets and at the same time blurred dicks and pussies.”

While much appears unchanged on the surface, Loriashvili is aware of a shift in the feeling of this collection of photos. “Everything felt different because my journey was different – new people, new places, new books. But at the same time, I tend to create routines; they make me feel safe, I’m a control freak. So the more I return to a place, the more I build my own sense of routine within it,” she explains.

The images bring together both new collaborators and returning ones: Lily, a performer and dancer; Ellie, a dominatrix and rope artist; Shion, a dancer and rope model, and Narumi, who she met online. It’s a deliberate choice to avoid professional models, instead favouring something less rehearsed. The result is a series of images where subjects appear sprawled, contorted, or caught mid-movement, often in various states of undress and poised on patterned furniture or stained carpets.

She also shoots with Hinata, a collaborator from the previous series. It’s a relationship the photographer speaks highly of, discussing how their closeness made the series all the easier to shoot naturally. In one image, Hinata appears lying in a shell-shaped bathtub in a love hotel just outside Tokyo. “I particularly love an image where she removes her wig and looks straight into the camera,” Loriashvili recalls. “When I started photographing her in the bed, it just wasn’t working. The light was bad, the room was too small, and I didn’t have enough distance to frame the whole scene properly. The images felt wrong to me, and I started to panic. I was so fixated on that bed – but nothing was working, and I couldn’t let it go. At some point, I just got frustrated and thought, ‘fuck it’, let’s forget the bed and do something else. And that’s when it suddenly worked.”

That release of control mirrors something larger within the work itself. “Working with Hinata feels like a shared journey. She’s as invested in the process as I am. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and in those moments I can feel how her attitude mirrors my own,  when I feel lost, it shows. Then we reset, and it becomes my responsibility to find direction again. In a way, photographing others often feels like making self-portraits.”

In another standout shot, Loriashvili appears herself, standing undressed on the tatami in her Airbnb. “You’re not supposed to wear shoes on tatami. But in my defense, those shoes were completely clean and had never touched the outside,” she tells us.

More than anything, the photographer is drawn to the spaces she shoots, specifically the city’s fading love hotels. Many images are set against oak panelling, gaudy wallpaper, or surreal interiors – in one, a subject straddles a cowhide rodeo bull. “I was drawn to older, almost forgotten spaces, especially vintage love hotels that I try to visit while they still exist,” she explains. “They somehow remind me of my grandparents' place with flowery wallpaper and the smell of cigarettes.” It’s spaces like these that are increasingly disappearing, soon to be replaced by something cleaner, more sterile and homogeneous. “It makes me sad to think that one day places like this won’t exist.” For now, she’s not done with them: next year, she's planning to return to Japan and shoot in a love doll factory.