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A model that goes by Weed Slut 420 sinks into a ball pit on the showroom floor.

Close your eyes and imagine you could visit a place where you are immersed in adult sex fantasy. Open your eyes. You are at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

For the third consecutive year, I attended and documented real-time erotica and was one of more than 50,000 attendees. Everything sex, including: well-known adult entertainment stars, “Cam Girls” live streaming for tips, loads of all types of bedroom toys and apparel, and fetish demonstrations can be seen in one bustling hotel convention space that hosts a multitude of mainstream events and concerts at any other time of the year.

It takes quite a mind shift to exit a typical Vegas casino space, passing blinking machines and tourists, in order to enter a world of sex where anything and everything goes.

Standing in security near the main halls, one may see a woman leading a chained man wearing a head mask. Sex slaves and their masters also attend the show. And for the price of less than $100, you can attend too. However, attendees and media alike must sign an agreement that states touching and inappropriate behavior with models and exhibitors is strictly prohibited. The master and her masked man must have arrived together.

The expo prefaces the main card of the Adult Video News Awards and red carpet event, where the biggest names in adult entertainment walk a red carpet, weaving through the casino length, to an awards ceremony for the previous year’s film work.

Since 2012, Hard Rock Hotel has hosted the AVN Awards and expo each year in January shortly after the culmination of the city’s massive Consumer Electronics Show. Whether visitors to Sin City are viewing larger-than-life home electronics or adult stars, January in Las Vegas will not disappoint.

*Ronda Churchill is a freelance photojournalist working in Las Vegas and can be booked at http://www.rondachurchill.com Follow her on Instagram @rondachurchill

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A model stands among confetti at the VIXEN booth.

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An elderly man, left, takes a photograph of customized adult toys while another attendee gives a closer inspection.

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Jean, center and last name withheld, participates in a whip demonstration.

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(top left) Juniper, a Cam Girl, flirts with a client while live-streaming at the convention. (top right)  A Cam Girl’s computer is adorned with stickers and external lighting. (bottom) AK Ginger Snaps is illuminated by a modeling light at a live-streaming booth.

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Mr. Bunny XXX roams the showroom floor to hand out self promotional materials.

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Anja models her homemade embellished bra.

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Adverts for online entertainers, pens, pins and condoms are displayed on a freebies table.

 

 

 

 

XXXcellent people watching

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Ron Terry, center, takes a photo with models Gia Page, from back left, Melissa Moore and Marsha May at the Mofos.com booth during the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo 2016 at Hard Rock hotel-casino Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Las Vegas. The 4-day expo featured adult entertainers, merchandise, and the latest technology in the adult entertainment industry.

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(left) entertainer changes from sneakers into high heels (right) an adult toy designed to look like actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is shown

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People walk through the hallway in outside the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo 2016 at Hard Rock hotel-casino Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, in Las Vegas.

 

I asked a man for his name after I took his photograph for the newspaper, and I received a very unusual response. Not only did he reply, but also he invited me to participate in an orgy.

“We’d love to have you,” he said overly enthusiastically as he handed me a card to join his local orgy club.

I had my cameras in tow. My jaw was open for sure. This was definitely a first for me.

Today I covered the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, a four-day long event in Sin City that culminates with an adult film awards show, sort of like the GRAMMYs, but for porn.

Every year the expo follows the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest convention in the world. In past years, when it’s time for the “porn convention,” as us locals call it, I have either been booked, out of town, or the [porn] stars have not aligned and was unable to cover the show.

This year, I was a kid on her way to Disneyland when my editor granted my request to shoot the big show. It was time I experienced the pull of it all.

It wasn’t that I was excited to cover the show because I would get to see a bunch of scantily-clad porn stars and some, quite frankly pervy sex stuff, I was excited because I had a chance to shoot something weird and wacky in my town. Give me a mailbox in the desert believed to be the portal to the extraterrestrial; a roomful of doctors performing knee replacement surgery on cadavers (some legs only); a massive home museum filled with movie props and exotic flotsam that is open to the public once a year, because I live for this sort of assignment.

(By the way, I have photographed all of those things.)

The Adult Entertainment Expo did not fail to meet my expectations. In fact, it surpassed them. It was the mecca of all weird and wacky. I had no idea that people had fetishes involving dressing up as babies in actual diapers. I didn’t know that there was an entire market that pined for extremely young women of a certain ethnicity or that a person can have the illusion of having grown their own animal tail by inserting a “toy” adorned with long fur up somewhere naughty. I guess to say that I was naïve before entering the show is a bit of an understatement.

My computer is also naïve. Next time I bring in it in to Apple for a check-up or repair, I will certainly clear my browser history and remove some 600 images from the show. I write all of my photo captions and have to check facts and company spellings, which includes performing many Internet searches and firmly closing pop-up windows. I’m afraid I may be on some national watch list after completing this gig.

All and all, I really enjoyed my day of people watching and covering an event that was very foreign to me. I didn’t bring back any souvenirs from my trip to the adult theme park, but I did bring back a lot of cards handed to me by the entertainers I photographed as well as pamphlets from eager vendors. I think it’s time I throw my ThinkTank camera and media pouches into the laundry. Immediately.

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(left) I try out virtual reality porn goggles. (right) my MacBook pro and show loot/notes.

For a link to the Review-Journal story:

http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/porn-pros-put-out-whats-new-las-vegas-convention