CONCRETE MIRAGES by Tom de Peyret, Poursuite

8.5 × 11 in
72 pages
Offset printing
Hardcover case binding
Soft touch with spot gloss detail
Poursuite, 2021
First edition of 200

While Donald Trump was being inaugurated, photographer Tom de Peyret traveled to Las Vegas and captured the underside of a city lost in its own verticality.

In Concrete Mirages, Tom de Peyret freezes a seemingly abandoned setting, from the flashiest towers to empty dams, only a scattering of onlookers walk in the stifling heat. These towers emerge like golden totems from a landscape of which there is almost nothing left, as if we’ve been propelled into a dystopian world following some kind of catastrophe.

Yet these elements recount a true and shared history, that of the energy spent in an absurd and vain quest, the quasi-impossible construction of a city in the middle of the desert. It is the very story of the birth of Las Vegas and its urban unrest.

The photographer’s minimalist work runs counter to the almost hysterical profusion that emanates from the city. Between vertical madness and horizontal vertigo, Tom de Peyret paints a unique and stellar portrait of Sin City.