Framing Las Vegas "Reality"

To approach [reality], one has to strip away clichés that keep it hidden from sight. — Michael Ignatieff

On my first day of photographing in Las Vegas, I took a picture of one of the locals, a waitress who was taking a break from her shift at the Harley-Davidson Cafe. My intent was to make a documentary-style portrait of a particular individual who lives in Vegas and works along the Strip. So I focused my subject in the frame, pushed the button, and said, "Thanks for letting me take your picture, Brenda." Brenda gave me a puzzled look, then glanced down at her bodice, fingered her badge, and replied, "Actually, my name is Angel. I forgot my name tag today, but luckily Brenda left hers in the drawer."

Yes, a waitress anywhere might borrow a name tag, but Angel had so casually slipped into this alternative identity that she seemed to have forgotten about it. Could it be that, in this city where so much is fake, people reinvent themselves as freely as you and I get dressed in the morning? By Angel's reckoning, the recurrent Vegas theme of luck had played a big role in her name that day. However, I suspected that the odds of someone wearing a misleading name tag were greater in Vegas than in other cities.

Earlier that morning, as the check-in clerk at Harrah's Las Vegas handed me a book of discount coupons, she said, "Now figure out your game plan. And good luck!" She meant, of course, that I should think about how I was going to optimize my money on gambling, shopping, entertainment, and eating, but my game plan was to take pictures along the Strip in the hopes of uncovering some truths about Vegas. Programmed by the hotel clerk to believe that, no matter how well I strategized, chance would play a role in my day, I indeed felt lucky to have stumbled upon that little white lie of a name tag. But the longer I explored the culture of imagery in Vegas, the more I came to realize that the misleading evidence in my so-called documentary photograph was emblematic of the game of deception that is everywhere in Vegas. The portrait of Angel (a.k.a. Brenda) would resurface in my vision not as a lucky find but as a constant reminder, like the inscriptions on wide-angle mirrors, that in Vegas, nothing is as it appears.

As a teacher of photography, I frequently remind my students that, once a photograph has been taken, what is inside the frame is all that we know. Even though a picture might seem to represent a one-to-one correspondence to the materials of the real world, there is always something missing. A photograph is, after all, a two-dimensional rectangle of visual information that has been removed from its original context in time and place. A photograph is based on the stuff of the real world, and yet it has the potential to deceive. In the picture of the waitress, one might note the woman's expression, her makeup, her hairstyle, her clothing, her gesture with the cigarette, and that little rectangular piece of evidence naming her Brenda. From the information contained within the frame, however, a viewer could not possibly know that outside of her existence in this frame she was known as Angel.

With its reputation for seeming to present evidence and its potential for creating fiction, photography is a perfect medium to play games with notions of reality. In Vegas, renowned for elaborate fabrications, a culture of picture taking has evolved that reinforces the idea that nothing is real. Like every entertainment center, Vegas takes advantage of the hordes of camera-toting visitors to promote an image that supports its main industry. Just as we might primp in front of a mirror before we pose for a picture, Vegas is camera-ready with backdrops, costumed characters, and visual games that tout its reputation for being fake. In other parts of the country, when I ask if I might take someone's picture, the disclaimer "Careful, I might break your camera" is the cliché of choice, conveying both modesty and tacit permission for me to press the shutter button. But in Vegas, the city's motto, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," is recited facetiously as a preamble to picture taking. With every repetition of this catchy phrase, an imaginary frame forms around the people within earshot to cordon them off from the rest of the world. It's as if they are reciting a mantra to remind one another, just as I remind my students about photographs, that what is inside the frame is all that exists. These days, people are surely aware that any pictures could end up on the Internet, yet the shopworn motto still has the power to invoke temporary amnesia about the present day and conjure up images of Vegas in an era when it might have been possible to control information. When I asked a young man who wore his alcoholic beverage in a plastic guitar strung around his shoulder if I might take his picture, he recited the motto as one might utter a prayer before a risky act, then struck an in-your-face pose as a rock star. A beer-toting man responded to my request for a picture with an abbreviated, "Okay, baby, but remember ..." as he swelled out his chest for me to read the Vegas motto printed on his T-shirt. I overheard the phrase recited by two young couples who took turns posing with their hands on the brass frieze of female buttocks — a favorite photo spot in the hallway of the Riviera Casino Hotel. A middle-aged man who was imitating a "smutter" (Las Vegas lingo for a distributor of "calling cards") by flicking his own collection of porno cards and pretending to offer them to passersby, paused to pose for his wife's camera and then (because he noticed me watching?) recited the magic protective words.

A hodgepodge of costumed characters located throughout Vegas helps to create this "anything goes" atmosphere that encourages people to momentarily suspend the notion of reality. Costumed actors within the resorts, such as groups of gladiators in the shopping area of Caesars Palace and the dwarf in a leprechaun suit advertising cheap beer outside O'Sheas Casino fit the theme of their territory. But on the sidewalks of the Strip, the cast of costumed characters resists classification. There are the characters paid to advertise for events and resorts — rows of Rollerbladers in sleek silver outfits bearing flags to advertise the Russian Ice Capades, scantily clad women with feather headdresses handing out coupons for bars and restaurants, men draped in sandwich boards depicting helicopter rides over the Grand Canyon, and of course Liberace. The everyday street party includes a rotating crew of costumed visitors — pairs of brides and grooms, groups of guys wearing fraternity letters, and squadrons of bikers clad in silver-studded black leather. Amid this cast of regular characters, individuals parade the streets wearing T-shirts with messages that normally wouldn't be seen...