Las Vegas Periphery : Views from the Edge

by Brown, Laurene Krasny; Denton, Sally

• ISBN13: 9781938086014
• ISBN10: 1938086015
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-04-30
• Publisher: Intl Pub Marketing

Summary

Las Vegas: few other places on Earth resonate with such ingrained imagery of what a place might look like?an exotic tableau of neon light, extravagant architecture and fountains, fine dining, high-end gaming and entertainment, and human companionship that beckons people from all over the world to seek out this desert oasis of escape. But an escape from what? Ourselves? And what about the rich but fragile desert environment in which the city sprung? Laurie Brown has long been fascinated with what happens at the edge of burgeoning city environments. In her earlier, pioneering work on Los Angeles, she focused her attention on the terraforming activities of commercial enterprise at the edge of the metropolis: the literal scraping away of nature to accommodate the American Dream of more housing, more roads, more commercial development, more golf courses, more city services, more pressure on the environment. It was only natural that Brown would turn her attention to the eastern bookend of the Los Angeles corridor: Las Vegas. Once again Laurie Brown's camera embraces the view of life at the edge of expansion into the periphery of undeveloped nature. Here we see the terraforming activities continue, evolving into a quilt of fairways and asphalt and swimming pools and backyards and roadways onto the burdened landscape. In viewing the borders and boundaries that exist between human settlement and the natural environment, Laurie Brown takes us on a modern journey on a well-worn path in human history: the pushing out of the city, initially beyond city walls of ancient Rome and then medieval Europe and today beyond political boundaries into the undeveloped frontier. But at what cost? Like the ruins of Pompeii, Laurie Brown's photographs serve us well as barometers of our recent efforts toward creating a contemporary Eden: Las Vegas.