Site Specific: Las Vegas 05

A bird's eye view of Las Vegas begins in the spectacular surrounding Arizona and Nevada desert, moving to the reflecting edifices of hotel and gambling complexes. But so far it’s the Las Vegas photographs in which an innate sense of unreality collides most strikingly with Barbieri’s projected vision. The city’s simulated monuments are made to look artificial, in total defiance of their reality. For Barbieri it is "the city as an avatar of itself". Exactly a hundred years after the foundation of Las Vegas, Barbieri investigates the form that this most important of cities has adopted in the field of tourism and mass entertainment. The city is apparently unaffected by the dangers that characterise our era: the worldwide energy crisis and the ever-present fear of the danger of terrorism.