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Each year, porn performers, industry insiders, and fans gather in Las Vegas for the Adult Video News Awards, known as the "Oscars of porn," to crown and celebrate porn's best — and to have a little fun. Photographer Roger Kisby, who returned to the AVN Awards this year for the third time, says that the event's playfulness is what keeps drawing him back.
"I like covering events where people are not afraid to be who they are," he tells us. "There's a genuine enthusiasm and fun [at the Awards]."
This year, Kisby injected that playfulness into his work at the Awards by photographing seven AVN Award-winning performers in a wry series inspired by Terry O'Neill's iconic "Morning After" portrait of Faye Dunaway, which depicts the star the morning after winning an Oscar for her performance in 1977's Network.
"[O'Neill] did this beautiful photograph of her at her hotel by the pool having breakfast," Kisby says, "and she has the award and she's in her bathrobe, and there are newspapers of the headlines from the Oscars from the night before."
Dunaway likely didn't imagine that, 39 years later, porn's brightest luminaries would emulate her by showing off their awards in intimate moments away from the crowds and cameras (besides Kisby's, of course).
Click through to glimpse Mainstream Star of the Year jessica drake enjoying a well-deserved massage, Female Performer of the Year Riley Reid taking a dip with her statuette, and Best New Starlet Abella Danger treating herself to pancakes (that's our kind of victory lap).
As for Roger, he'll likely be back to the AVN Awards. "It's a very visual event," he says. "There's so much to photograph."
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