Some things refuse explanation.
Love is one of them.

Julie Tower is a fine art street photographer whose work exists at the intersection of intimacy and anonymity. Shooting entirely in black and white, with a cinematic eye developed long before the aesthetic became fashionable, she makes photographs of the moments that language has never quite been able to hold.

Because she believes that love was never meant to be explained, her work captures the unsaid and unrecognized moments longing to be witnessed.

Photography from behind. Many of her subjects are faceless by intention. A face gives the viewer permission to look away — to decide the image, the story, and the emotion belongs to someone else. Without one, the photograph becomes both a mirror and an opportunity for the rawness and unspoken truth of the subject to reveal itself. To be experienced. To be felt.

And to be uniquely understood and seen.

Julie Tower began photographing before it was a brand or a strategy. Her early childhood memories are of a first camera and spending time in a darkroom with her mother--and later growing up with a home darkroom. And over the years, she has taken hundreds of thousands of photographs, including extensively documenting her own children's childhood.

Julie's connection to photography and light is deeply rooted – and geographically, to Paris most of all, where her connection to the city spans generations and is the place where she is most at home with her camera. That early relationship with light, shadow, and monochrome is visible in every frame she makes today.

The style — high contrast, edgy, prismatic light with attention to shadow and form, slow in its insistence on stillness — was not adopted from a trend. It is a way of seeing that Julie Tower has carried for years. It's a style created to last.

Find Julie's Work

Julie Tower's photography can be found on her Instagram @Tower.Noir. In 2026, her work can also be found in galleries in Milan and Paris.

Additionally, Julie's work can be found on the Love Unexplained website and @LoveUnexplainedOfficial. Love Unexplained is Julie's passion project, featuring a curated gallery of images featuring moments of Love Unexplained in b+w, captured by emerging and renowned photographers from around the world.

Love Unexplained is a record of what love looks like when it refuses to be named — grief sitting quietly in a doorway, desire in the angle of a shoulder, solitude that is somehow not lonely, and a back that reveals truths both spoken and unspoken. The photographs do not explain themselves. They were never meant to.

Julie Tower is based in the United States and France. Follow her photography journey on Instagram at @tower.noir and @LoveUnexplainedOfficial. Join the conversation at #LoveUnexplainedOfficial.

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Love Unexplained is an independent publication launched in 2026. By subscribing, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters informing you of new content and opportunities to feature your work on our Love Unexplained Instagram, contests, and in calls for photography.