In this project, I’ve traveled throughout Las Vegas photographing different people in their own various environments and characters, building a patchwork portrait of the incredible work that goes into making Las Vegas thrive. Las Vegas would not be the destination that it is without the hardworking people that continue to uphold the myth of Vegas as the mecca of entertainment, escape and hedonism that it is. In this work I ask that the viewer leave behind the cliches of Vegas and see the beauty in the real hardworking and fabulous people behind it.
I'm interested in Las Vegas because it is an unlikely city in an unlikely place, while simultaneously remaining a quintessentially American city. Originally built as a destination for entertainment in the uninhabitable environment of the Nevada Desert, the city has become a caricature of itself; cartoon-like buildings illuminated by the sparkling lights of casinos with shows on every corner are stark contradictions to the barren desert landscape that surrounds it. Building on my interests in the mythologies created by subcultures, pop culture, and desert cities, Vegas’s nonsense makes sense. Reality can be suspended and it’s perfectly normal to be married by a lady Elvis impersonator or watch a burlesque performer writhe atop a repurposed mechanical bull-cum-ballon dog. You can lose big, but you can also win big, and that eternal hope held by both the tourists that visit and the people that create Vegas is what keeps it alive. Vegas has the potential to represent our wildest dreams, and what would America be without dreams?
I find myself returning to Dave Hickey's seminal essay on Vegas. As an art critic who resided in and championed Las Vegas as an art center and lived in sort of a self-exile there from the power centers of the art world, he had a sublime understanding of the parallels between Vegas and the rest of America. The difference between Vegas and the rest of America, however, was that the odds are posted. Facts are facts. What appears to be fiction is fact. That lady dressed as Elvis is real. “America is a very poor lens through which to view Las Vegas, while Las Vegas is a wonderful lens through which to view America. What is hidden elsewhere exists here in quotidian visibility.”* And it takes an army of people, piles of sequins and feather boas, and miles of neon lights to reveal those hidden truths.
*from Dave Hickey’s “A Home in the Neon,” Air Guitar, 1997
