'Web Cam Girls'

For six or seven years I have been documenting this AVN (Adult Video News Convention) in Las Vegas with rather unsettling and adult images on this self-proclaimed 'adult' photo site, and this is posted as an 'nude' photo, though the subjects are not really 'nude', for it  is so categorized for protection of those 'at work' or otherwise who feel 'sensitive'.

This is a genuine work of documentary photography.  Quite explicit works of similar but not identical nature have been posted with success by me relating to prior AVN conventions in this portfolio before, but I thoroughly understand if you feel this image is not within the standards set for Photo.net and recognize that Photo.net is a private site with the rights to set its own standards.

There is no way to 'preview' photos, or I would have used that avenue, note that there are far more explicit 'nudes' on this site, and that those photos show literally everything, whereas this photo shows literally no human to human contact and merely implies.

That being said, I wish to be a good Photo.net citizen, and if there had been a way to 'preview' this to seek review, I would have availed myself of that avenue before posting.  I have no intent to challenge the system. 

Your decision on this matter is up to you on this proprietary but often announced 'adult' site.  I feel the vast majority of members are quite up to the challenge, and that this is an 'interesting', seldom seen,and quality documentary photograph worthy of this service, and its posting is part of what makes my photography unique.

Humbly submitted.

john

John  (Crosley)

If you couldn't participate in this year's Adult Video News (porn)

convention in Las Vegas, these are among the minions of 'web cam

girls' who (tamed down) could bring it to you, but without nudity and

only insinuations of sex since bare breasts and sexual parts, unlike

Las Vegas shows, were forbidden from this annual 'sex' and money

extravaganza which I have been documenting here off and on for

more than half a decade.

Your ratings, critiques and observations are invited and most

welcome. If you rate harshly, very critically, or wish to make a

remark, please submit a helpful and constructive comment; please

share your photographic knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Be edified and educated - and enjoy the

photography! John

There was a very, very long row of such girls, laptops in front of all of them, each chatting with her customers, all with customers paying supposedly $2.99 - $3.99 per minute, for the 'experience' of seeing their 'models' mostly fully clothed AT the Adult Video New (porn) convention, along with lots of other men, all on the same feed, and NO CHANCE TO GO INTO A 'PRIVATE ROOM' FOR SOMETHING MORE EXPLICIT, as there was no chance these women could escape into privacy.

This was the ultimate in selling the squeal, I think, although I was not privy to the chats or the billing details.  I had not seen this feature in the several years that passed since I last attended an AVN convention, and suppose it was not the first time webcamming, a huge sex industry, had become a big feature of the 'porn' convention. 

But the last laugh was on the customers, I think, as there really was no porn there, other than low-cut tops, maybe some explicit chat and what you see above, which was just about the absolute limit for what was broadcast from this public floor (and there was no 'private' floor for webcamming).

But maybe I'm immune to the 'charms' of webcamming; I've never paid for a 'web cam girl', so what do I know? 

Then again, I've never tried to kiss a computer monitor either!

Seems like a case of selling the sizzle without the steak!

john

John (Crosley)

Alternate Posting Category:  E-Commerce.

This is a now major and ever-growing part of the multi-billion dollar sex industry.  It officially is known as 'video chat industry' but to those who understand, except for here, the real money's made in something other than chat (again, other than as depicted here, where mostly 'chat' is the name of the game at this convention.)

john

John (Crosley)

I  think we have lost our morals and ethics in America. Take a good look .. this is  our future. These are your future or current role models ... this is MOMMY. 

Please don't shoot the messenger; I only shoot what I see.

I have little doubt that a substantial number of these women depicted are mommies, too.

As to moral degeneracy, the women of the world selling sex have been called the 'world's oldest profession', and 'hookers' are named for a general 'Hooker' who allowed prostitutes to service his US troops, something that went unreported in most US elementary through high school text books, which may account in part for the appalling lack of education of many Americans about the history things sexual in a so-called Puritanical society.

Before I was born, brothels were just about everywhere in the US, and their mass extermination was born from the US soldiers returning from World War II passing laws to get rid of them.   

Those laws almost universally were successful, and during much of my early life I believed that prostitution in the US was largely eradicated rather than just driven underground.

Like a balloon that has been squeezed, though, the sexual need of males and the female willingness to fill it just seems to have squeezed through the metaphorical fingers of those doing the squeezing, whether through bribery and corruption, or through evolution, with the advent of 'escorts' and now, the current rage, cyber-sex, depicted above.

Moral bankruptcy was here when the rural farmer went to the tobacco auction with his year's tobacco sale money and got taken by the hootchy kootchy girls for his entire year's crop money. 

Nowadays it is unlikely that males using cybersex will contract horrible, disfiguring and/or deadly diseases from ladies of the evening or be done in by criminals for their 'crop money'.  They hand it over voluntarily to their 'girls'.

This is not a defense.

Just a matter of fact and an attempt to place this documentary photo (street photo too) in historical context.

You may regard it as bankruptcy that things sexual are being accepted more in the United States.  

Europeans like Germans accept that there are in most major and many minor cities prostitutes.

European women go to the beach topless and often bottomless.  Is that Sodom and Gomorroh?

I have no answers, only observations and questions.

I do not defend web-camming; I do not participate as I regard it as a perfect waste of good money, buying the sizzle alone.

The Internet is awash with free porn . . . .    In Holland prostitution is legal and though confined to historical districts, I am told both that teen pregnancy is low by historical standards, rape is a virtual rarity, and since condom use is required by law, VD use is almost nonexistent among patrons.

I do not know the answers.

I just take photos, which I hope cause those who view them cause those viewers to think.

I see you have been prompted to some thinking, for which I am thankful.

john

John (Crosley)

John, I wonder why you do not submit this picture under some category like "event" or "documentary."  It really is like a piece of news.

Regards,

Jerry

Interesting comment.

I prefer to name my photos 'street' where it's defensible to keep my body of work coherent.

Yes, it is an 'event' but I didn't shoot the 'event' as a whole but went looking for 'one-off' shots, for my 'street' portfolio, as I have done in past years.

You won't find a portfolio called 'porn convention' or 'AVN convention' or even 'sex worker pretenders' or some such, though that's exactly what they do at such gatherings as there is no real sex being sold -- only the sizzle.

Yes, it's a little 'documentary' but I don't have a narrative, which I think would justify better my naming it 'documentary' but that's really 'dealer's choice', and my choice is 'street'.

Interestingly the FLICKR Hard Core Street group reserves the right to disapprove any posting under 'street' which doesn't come from an actual 'street' which to my way of thinking is being way, way too literal.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was no stranger to rooftops, and nowadays with this newer word 'street' that might apply to his shots, his rooftop or stairway or bordello shots would not qualify for the FLICKR 'street' group's stringent and too literal qualification (as I read it).

I favor the Cartier-Bresson approach - just take the photo and worry about what to call it (and keep what you call yourself to yourself entirely, even if you call yourself as he did 'photojournalist' to the world'.  He never answered the question of what he called his work to himself -- that was totally private, but I'm sure it was more 'artist' than 'journalist'. 

I like the prickly and mercurial old guy's approach . . . . and really the main constraint is when I can I like to keep my body of work together under one moniker, and when I can justify it, that is 'street', and in my naming structure, this certainly qualifies as I have explained.

Good, thoughtful question, however, and I hope you can see my reasoning. 

It would be stupid I think to have 1900 photos under 'street' or 1900 under 'street' 20 under 'landscape' 200 under 'portrait and 1 under 'event'.

Why not just lump all but 'fine art' and 'landscape together if logic allows?

I'm still impressed by your question, though.  It was thoughtful and I hope my answer showed more structure and intelligence than maybe you might have given me credit for when you asked.

Thanks for the chance to explain and for hearing me out.

john

John (Crosley)

One last point.

You suggested this was 'news'.

It might have been.

Last January.

I just reviewed my captures the other day.

I'm in no hurry, a technique I borrowed from Garry Winogrand.

Much as his photos make me feel uncomfortable (he intended that I think), he was a very, very wise man and quite the intellectual in his methods, no matter how disorganized he appeared to have been in his work habits.

In fact, he just believed in 'aging' his work to have a fresh look at everything to maintain separation between the 'event' and his 'editorial remoteness' I am sure.

I try to do that when I can, too, and am still reviewing captures from 2004 onward -- even though many have been reviewed before, and those from five years ago have not had a thorough review of all -- and I keep finding wonderful stuff I 'meant' to 'work with' but forgot about in the rush of taking new.

Best to you, Jerry.

john

John (Crosley)

After a few years' absence, I returned to the annual Adult Video extravaganza which is popularly known as the annual porno convention in Las Vegas.

This time, instead of finding only promotions for videos, among other things, I found a very long line of mostly (not all) young women with laptops, hooked up, it seems to a world of porn-hungry men worldwide who wanted to experience these young women experiencing the 'porn extravaganza' as the women talked into microphones in low voices and with each other, but shielded their screens (bearing names of subscribers/viewers) from  passersby, all seated on a VERY, VERY, VERY long series of tables combined end to end and covered with computers and female webcasters, slinkily dressed, but with nothing 'sexual' exposed.

This is the new state of the sex industry -- the webcasting industry, which pulls in well over a billion dollars in 'tips' for the models, either from private performances in 'private rooms' (I am told) or open to all performances in which viewers are encouraged to 'tip' with prepaid 'tokens' but worth real money to the 'models' and their go-betweens which are split.

Long lines built up for the adult actresses, but nowhere near like in past years, and the 'hall' was downgraded from the Sands Convention Center to another hall, far, far smaller (and without a basement for industry sales).

It was emblematic of the downgrading of the organized porn industry itself, as it breaks up from organized filmmaking in the Internet age, from 'web sites' with subscription lists, to the webcamming industry into which viewers are lured by FREE clips of porn, then 'converted' into 'live' broadcasts of webcamming girls, couples and some guys, and use of patron credit cards.

This is a photo of those changes.  All before I read it on the news, I inadvertently had stumbled into a photo documenting it . . . . .

This is that photo -- which is an emblem of a sea change in the organized porno/sex industry, one in which the 'models' have more control, it's safer for them (usually) and in which they make more money (for the most part).

Sometimes taking a photo can tell a story, and then it dawns on the photographer later that the story IS the photo.

This is one such instance.  I unwittingly documented a change I was  unaware was sweeping an entire industry . . . . just to get a 'good' and interesting photo. 

Little did I know.

john

John (Crosley)

The editing window is closed.

It should say above:   x x x 'open to all viewers [not performers]  x x x regarding who is allowed to view some of the porno webcasts and 'tip' for what they feel are 'good' performances.

I apologize for the mistake.

john

John (Crosley)