Benjamin Lowy

RECENT WORK: Up and Down, In and Out Vegas

Las Vegas - the City of Sin. The city of gratuitousness, high rollers, sex, and tawdry weekend getaways. A city dreaming of fast money and deviant parties and extreme hangovers. A city thought to be recession proof. A city with a home for every worker, a miniscule unemployment rate, and opportunity. But that Vegas is no more. Las Vegas is now a city of European tourists spending a cheap American dollar. A city of empty strip clubs, empty hotel casinos, and foreclosed homes. A city struggling to survive under the skeletal husks of abandoned construction projects, tent cities for the homeless, and a withering economy.

Las Vegas is slumming.

Following their retirement or casino redesign, all the neon signs taken down and thrown out, make their way to the "Boneyard," a protected area in north Las Vegas. Here the neon signs used in Ls Vegas' brighter days lie used and unlit.
   
Strippers preform at the Las Vegas based Sapphire strip club, reputed to be the worlds largest gentlemen's club. Even strippers, in an industry long considered to be recession proof, are feeling the pinch on these hard economic times. Many are making 30 percent less in tips from private dances on any given evening.
   
Tent cities, long a common sight in Las Vegas where many homeless come to summer, are increasing in size with many men and women who have lost jobs, their homes, and hope in the system.
     
  
An opera singing gondolier steers his costumers down the gaudy canals of the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
   
Young club goers dance and party at the exclusive and popular LAX nightclub at the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas.
   
The Fontainebleau, a $2.9 Billion planned resort hotel and casino is unfinished and construction halted while the developer and bank lenders file for bankruptcy.
     
  
Debris, destruction, and human detritus are all that remain in numerous abandoned homes whose owners fell victim to the current economic crisis.
   
Las Vegas deputy constable Ethan Tseu, makes his rounds on a routine day, posting notices of foreclosures and evictions, and investigating properties abandoned by former Las Vegas residents.
   
Swimmers play in the wave pool and beach at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
     
  
Beer bottles, food wrappers, and the calling cards for Las Vegas based escort services litter the ground of Las Vegas boulevard, otherwise know as "The Strip."
   
Tent cities, long a common sight in Las Vegas where many homeless come to summer, are increasing in size with many men and women who have lost jobs, their homes, and hope in the system.
   
Pedestrians walk past the City Center construction site, an enormous MGM Mirage/Dubai casino and hotel project of vast scale. It was almost aborted, but has recently received a much needing investment of funding.
     
  
Debris, destruction, and human detritus are all that remain in numerous abandoned homes whose owners fell victim to the current economic crisis.
   
Las Vegas deputy constable Ethan Tseu, makes his rounds on a routine day, posting notices of foreclosures and evictions, and investigating properties abandoned by former Las Vegas residents.
   
Debris, destruction, and human detritus are all that remain in an abandoned home in a low-income section of Las Vegas.
     
  
Strippers preform at the Las Vegas based Sapphire strip club, reputed to be the worlds largest gentlemen's club. Even strippers, in an industry long considered to be recession proof, are feeling the pinch on these hard economic times. Many are making 30 percent less in tips from private dances on any given evening.
   
Foreclosed and abandoned casinos, hotels, and businesses litter the streets of Las Vegas, a city that has been horribly hit by the sub-prime market crash and the economic crisis it spawned.
   
Debris, destruction, and human detritus are all that remain in an abandoned home in a low-income section of Las Vegas.
     
  
A Las Vegas deputy constable looks through an abandoned home in a low-income residential area of Las Vegas.
   
  
Inside the exclusive Tao nightclub in the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
     
  
A man walks down a deserted stretch of street in downtown Las Vegas.
   
Foreclosed and abandoned casinos, hotels, and businesses litter the streets of Las Vegas, a city that has been horribly hit by the sub-prime market crash and the economic crisis it spawned.
   
Construction has been halted at the Boyd Gaming owned Echelon Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
     
  
Newly weds Peter and Mary Sandford of Del valle, TX get their wedding pictures taken on top the Las Vegas Stratosphere as an unrelated quartet of girls from Orange county, CA look on. While the current economic crisis has impacted Las Vegas, tourism is still a major profit generating industry.
   
Foreclosed and abandoned casinos, hotels, and businesses litter the streets of Las Vegas, a city that has been horribly hit by the sub-prime market crash and the economic crisis it spawned.