Rome – Las Vegas: Bread and Circuses catalogs the two cities

I have yet to make a pilgrimage to The Sphere, but I think about it more than I’d like to admit, searching for tickets to see Dead & Company under its dome of high-resolution screens or doling out Instagram likes to friends who road-tripped east on Interstate 15 in search of immersive communion. As Las Vegas’s newest attraction, The Sphere opened in 2023, but the values it embodies were there all along. These are captured in the latest photo book from Iwan Baan, Rome – Las Vegas: Bread and Circuses: desire, spectacle, the “horror” of global tourism, as contributing essayist Ryan Scavnicky puts it after Nikola Tesla. For all the earthly talk of showgirls and slot machines, fear and loathing, ducks and decorated sheds, Sin City is a place of passion and transcendence: a truth closer to godliness than devilish temptation.

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