Recession hits the money shot

Another year, another Erotica exhibition at London’s Olympia centre.  Having covered this event four times, it’s actually become quite a challenge to get something that’s both different from previous years and is acceptable for publication on the news wire.

While horrible nastiness and the carnage from Middle Eastern suicide blasts often makes it’s way straight to the wire, porn and sex can cause real problems if the images crop up in a country that frowns on that sort of thing so the subject has to be approached in a manner that shows everything without showing anything.  Simple, eh?

As it happens, this year’s task was much easier to do due to the fact that the show was about one third of it’s usual size, despite tickets having sold out.  With 75,000 people expected to visit over three days, the exhibition space seemed very empty.  Rather than the usual stands full of models and porn-stars signing promotional posters and DVDs, the show was more focused on toys, clothes and “equipment”, as it were.  If this is down to the recession, it’s interesting that the adult industry is usually named as one area of business that would not be affected by the global financial crisis but it’s clearly beginning to catch up on all quarters.

The stage show also seemed to be very similar to previous years, but was saved by some very talented acrobats and performers. I guess that the show can’t feature the kind of thing that the stalls are selling so instead it goes along the burlesque route. One break from the routine came from the performer in photos #3 and #8 who displayed a hardcore exfoliation method by bouncing around in a bath of broken glass.  Nice.

You would think that the tabloids would be all over this like a hairy bear every year but the next day saw nothing in there from any photographer, never mind my shots.  My only hit from the play report of image usage around the world that I get to see was of photo #1 in an Indian newspaper.  Who’d have thought that the UK papers would avoid the chance to show some flesh?  It just goes to show that nothing is ever guaranteed when picture editors are involved!

With my fourth year now under my belt, I think it’s time for a break from the Erotica show for a few years.  While providing more interesting pictures than the usual stake-out in the rain, I think I may have reached my limit of shooting semi-naked pole-dancers. Now THERE’S a phrase I never thought I’d see myself write..

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 4:35 pm. It is filed under The working day and tagged with adult entertainment, burlesque, dancer, dildo, erotica, feathers, firebreathing, flames, glamour, leon neal, leonneal, london, news, olympia, photographer, photography, pole dancer, pole dancing, poledancer, porn, pornography, recession, sex, sexual, strap-on, stripper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.