Las Vegas is the latest installment in This is not a map, a collection of perfectly useless maps that celebrate the encounter between a photographer and a place.
These authentic fake Michelin maps, printed on the original paper, combine the pleasure of the map with the pleasure of the image, taking the viewer on a narrative and subjective journey that is artistically pointless and highly seductive. Following Texas, Las Vegas is the second issue published by Poetry Wanted.
Las Vegas. Some people can spend a few days playing the tables, slumming it, getting married. Others moved into a motel for a month, fill the minibar with film rolls, and attempt to capture the soul of this strange place. Ronan Guillou belongs in this second category.
Las Vegas. There’s the Strip, which attracts nearly 50 million visitors a year. But there’s more to the city. Located in the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas is in the center of a vast, barren valley surrounded by mountains where more than 2 million people live spread out over a dozen cities.
This colorful map shows a little of the atmosphere of Las Vegas Valley. It lets us see how some of the places creep farther out into the desert year after year, and introduces us to the people Guillou encountered there.
Guillou was born in France in 1968. He lives in Paris, where he has worked as a professional photographer since 1997. In the early 2000s, he began his investigation of urban America, and the country slowly became his central subject. In 2011 he published Angel, featuring an introduction by the filmmaker Wim Wenders. His work on the United States has been shown in several solo and group exhibitions in France and abroad. Guillou is represented by NextLevel Galerie in Paris.
BOOK
Las Vegas
Published by POETRY WANTED
Release January 23, 2014
16 euros
Available on www.thisisnotamap.com and select bookstores
Book launch and signing at ARTAZART in Paris
Thursday, January 23 from 19:00 to 21:30
83, quai de Valmy – Paris 10e
France
