Vegas Streets

Statement:

A man walks out of a hotel and yells “Vegas” as if he just made it to paradise coming on to the Las Vegas Strip. This experience can be simplified to represent the transient weekend population of Vegas. Vegas is host to over 40 million tourist every year who migrate to the Strip and the Downtown looking for a good time. This diverse range of tourists attracts an even more unique type of person the street performer.

Street performers come in all different shapes and forms, from your favorite super hero to a person wearing close to nothing at all. These mainly local performers would flock to strategic areas around the strip or downtown working to attract the passerby’s to take photos with them or to be subjected to an odd ritual for tips. Some people find street performers to be a nuisance or even vulgar, but most get a smile from the antics of the performers. The hustle of these performers shows the heart of Vegas at a whole it’s a place of love, trial, misery and imitation.

Moving to Vegas, I was taken back this street culture that inhabited the strip and downtown, the thousands of people who would be moving from one location to the next as if they were possessed by the endless Vegas charm only to be stopped disgusted or amazed by a 60 year old man dressed up like baby cupid in a diaper. I became fascinated with these compelling people who attracted so many views from the dazed tourist crowd. This fascination brought me to capture these street performers in their chosen locations to show the craze and wonderment they bring to Vegas. Walking the streets every Friday and Saturday for a year, I came to see they are what make Vegas strange and an interesting place worth yelling about.

After months after creating this work, a new city ordinance was put into place to “dampen the debauchery” in a attempt to make the City of Sin more like Disneyland.

All photographs created over 2013-2014