The Softer Side Of Hardcore With Van Styles

Van Styles and Andy San Dimas Photographed by Sagan Lockhart

The latest estimates suggest there’s more than 24 million pornography sites on the Internet—that’s about one site for every twelve people in the United States. For today’s adult film directors, porn’s overwhelming abundance on the Internet has raised the creative stakes as production houses strain to develop pay-to-play content more compelling than what’s already available online for free. The main ingredient, of course, is always sex, but for producers like 31-year-old Los Angeles native Stephen Vanasco, who goes by the directorial alias, Van Styles, making the sex both unique and worth purchasing is a delicate balancing act between compressing fantasy and stretching reality.