Paris played host to France’s first sex worker festival over the weekend, featuring a wide range of participants from the industry, including prostitutes, sex photographers, porn stars, and workers’ rights activists.

The Snap! Festival was established to promote sex worker rights and criticize current legislation regarding prostitution; a 2016 law introduced fines of up to €1,500 (US$1,700) for clients of prostitutes, with the penalties doubling upon repeat offence.

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The festival organizers said the event’s chief goal is to value sex workers’ discourse about themselves and their creative processes, as “when the media decide to discuss their situation, they are often ridiculed, stigmatized or subject to caricature.”

Snap! featured documentaries, photo exhibitions, and performance tents, as well as discussion forums where “sexualities, classes, genders and genres” could be discussed freely, combining “feminist, radical, queer and anarchist fringe cultures.”

Daniel Hellmann from Switzerland set up a so-called “full service” tent at the festival.

“It can range from fellatio to writing a poem or some spiritual advice. We agree in advance on the price and the delivery of service,” Hellmann said.

Performances and exhibitions included titles such as ‘Whores and Feminists’ and ‘Sex Work Is Work’, and were designed to spark discussion about human sexuality and how that can be incorporated into a profession, without stigma.

Meanwhile, documentary filmmaker Marianne Chargois said people in the industry are simply seeking autonomy from “self-proclaimed specialists” who legislate on sex workers’ behalf and “want to ‘save us’ from our activities.”

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“As long as there is no decriminalisation of sex work, nothing will change,” Maia Izzo-Foulquier, curator of the photo exhibitions at the festival, told AFP.

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