Photographer Hunter Barnes (born 1977) has an extraordinary ability to document aspects of culture and communities ignored by the mainstream and often misrepresented in the modern American narrative. In this most recent work, he explores the Las Vegas that was. These photographs celebrate the old Vegas, the people who shaped the town in its heyday. Not much of it remains, but here are the people and landmarks that endure today—that represent the life "Off the Strip." Hunter's powerful portraits remember those in "the greatest town you could live in [where] the spirit of old Las Vegas still remains."
In his early twenties, Barnes self-published his first book, Redneck Roundup, documenting the dying communities of the Old West. Other projects followed: four years spent with the Nez Perce tribe; months with a serpent handling congregation in the Appalachian mountains; bikers, lowriders, and street gangs; inmates in California State Prison. Intense, true pockets and sub-cultures of America. Barnes shoots exclusively on film, the pace of analogue in harmony with his approach. Fundamental to his work is the journey, the people, the place—and committing them to film before they are greatly changed or gone forever.
