Your best mate’s getting hitched. Your partner got that dream job she was after. Your dad’s just had the all clear from cancer. We can really sense the emotion of the smiling faces in these images by Lewis Khan for WhatsApp but as for why they’re so happy, we’ve got no idea…

That was the intention behind this campaign – to showcase the privacy of the messaging platform, which uses end-to-end encryption. Lewis’s pictures of models experiencing intimate moments on their phones were intended for an international audience so, although they were all shot in different locations in London in May 2021, they needed to feel like they could be in Brazil.

Each mood was initially inspired by an emoji. Lewis directed the models to imagine scenarios that would get the right reactions. He shot the images on film, as well as digital – with the digital graded to mimic the deep tones and lush highlights of analogue. This gives them a realness and also a sense that we’re witnessing something special, although what that is, we’ll never know!