24 Hours in Las Vegas

I have a real love / hate thing with Las Vegas. Somewhere I read that Las Vegas was the "brightest star in the neon firmament of post-modernism" and that description seems especially accurate. My wife and I got married there in 2001, by a slim and sexy Elvis. That was mostly because we wanted to do anything BUT have a traditional church wedding, but we had a great time and the whole ceremony was quite memorable.

We go back often. Not every year, but quite a bit. What's good in Vegas is the heat, the overwhelming brutality of the sun which seems to literally hammer down on you, and some of the food. What's bad is, of course, the astounding and despicable excess of so many of the people that fill the streets and casinos. At first it's kind of fascinating to watch them, with their ten thousand dollar handbags and horrific plastic surgery. After a while though you get kind of numb to the horror of it all, and a quiet hour or two by a pool staring up into the cloudless desert sky has some real charm.

Anyway, in 2006 I took my newly crafted pinhole camera - the one my friend Fred made for me that took all those blurry and distorted photos - and set out to document a single 24 hour span in the city. The following 26 photographs, which will be posted on the blog at the precise time each was taken nearly 6 years ago, are the story of that day in Vegas. I did sleep a bit, somewhere in there. I can't remember where exactly but, as you'll see, there's a decent amount about that day that I don't remember.