Las Vegas Tunnels

There are hundreds of people living beneath the city of Las Vegas in Storm drains.  Tunnels are cool and dry in hot humid weather and appear to make good shelter. The danger is that when least expected a flash flood can occur and within seconds wash the tunnels clean. The encampments in a tunnel can disappear instantly and residents need to watch the weather and have an escape plan.

I went to Las Vegas, Nevada to see if I could get into the tunnels underneath the city and photograph the encampments there. I spent weeks making calls to outreach workers all of which fell flat. It was hard to get my calls returned and when I did get through to a human it would lead to a dead end over and over again.

The voices that I spoke to on the phone said the outreach teams are too afraid to enter the tunnels and they only go down with a police escort to do an annual head count. One social worker even came out and said that Las Vegas was not a homeless friendly city and that there are more laws against these people than to help them. I was warned to avoid the very tunnels I came to visit. The police do not enter the tunnels, in the underworld there is no protection, you are on your own.

To tag along with people who already knows the camps is always a blessing.  They know where it is safe and where to avoid.  Without that heads up I am destine to discover those facts on my own.

I can’t just show up at someone’s door and trust that I will be welcome with open arms. It is really a hit or miss sort of deal. I may click with a person that allows me into their world or I may not.  I never assume that the people I want to photograph are out to hurt me but it makes sense to take extra sets of eyes to help monitor the surroundings. 

We went directly to the tunnels without a guide. It was not hard to find what I was looking for but the next question becomes “ How smart is this to do alone being a female with expensive gear?”

I was hoping to have a support team and what I ended up with was just myself and a girlfriend. While she is a loving compassionate person, I’m not sure she could handle it if we went down a dark tunnel and ended up in harms way. As a photographer looking through a lense, I am the last person who is aware of the surroundings and thus I become very vulnerable. Now I not only have to be concerned about myself but for my assistant.  

We did introduce ourselves and were able to shoot a bit at the entrance of the tunnel but  my gut feeling was NOT to go inside yet. The homeless man we spoke with was drunk. It didn’t feel very wise to travel into a long dark tunnel where I already knew I we were outnumbered.  I could see and hear many other people back in the darkness and they made it clear they were not interested in our company.

I held out hope that before I left town I would be able to hook up with an outreach worker but that plan fell through. It will certainly take more time and energy before I can accomplish my goals of documenting the Vegas underground.

To do this work I spend countless hours building relationships with people and returning to work with the same people that I have built a trust with. It is hard to build relationships as I quickly breeze through a town but as I travel to new cities I will need to get used to working this way. This challenge is harder than I had anticipated but it is an issue I have to learn to flow with.