Sheila Swan and Peter Laufer are the authors of the book Neon Nevada, which is now available in a newly updated and expanded version. Their other books include Safety and Security for Women Who Travel.
Q: What inspired you to write Neon Nevada?
A: We met in Nevada and soon after discovered our unexpected mutual fascination with neon. What followed were Nevada road trips crisscrossing the state. We sought to document a cultural phenomenon which seemed to be on the wane at that time.
Q: What would you say are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about Las Vegas and Nevada overall?
A: A common perception is that neon equals the Las Vegas strip. In fact the family-friendly, theme park-like Strip of today is now disarmingly void of neon...the former walls of neon replaced with the faux Eiffel Tower, the magical Bellagio fountains and the also-faux New York skyline.
A common misconception is that neon is dying. Our book documents its vibrant return to Nevada center stage from Las Vegas to establishments all over the Silver State.
Q: This is an updated and expanded version of the book--what are some of the changes in this new edition?
A: This updated and expanded edition is filled with about a third more content (and the preexisting content is updated—what places and their signs no longer exist, what vibrant signs are deteriorated into broken glass and faded paint, what owners chose to rehabilitate their signs and make them glow again).
The new content represents the resurgence of Nevada neon: new beautiful commercial artistry that proves the renaissance of the medium, a renaissance we argue that means neon in Nevada no longer is susceptible to becoming just a flickering memory.
Q: How did you choose the photos to include in the book?
A: Because of Nevada's neon fame our goal is to show three aspects of neon using Nevada neon as prime examples of the medium.
First, we document—over a 50-year period—neon history from its zenith as ubiquitous come-hither advertising signage, to its deterioration in the midst of a soiled reputation as representative of wrong-side-of-the-tracks establishments, to its rediscovery by artists and preservationists, to its current resurgence as both a vibrant modern advertising medium and a nostalgic nod to a slower-paced past.
Second, we show—via images of signs that no longer exist—the history of a West that is fast disappearing. The hyper-local and mom-and-pop have been replaced by strip mall and chain store sameness.
Third, we demonstrate the influence of neon, since its inception, on the built environment.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Peter is working on a 9/11, 25 years later book titled O Say Can You See.
On September 11, 2001, he was in a meeting at the National Geographic Society in Washington. A few days later, with return flights to the West Coast still grounded, he rented a car and headed home, rolling across a stunned America understandably fixated on the devastation, stopping for talks with Americans living far from Manhattan and D.C.
Via sharply focused interviews, he froze the time America acted out and worked through 9/11. It's a story told in Americans' voices and punctuated with their intimate portraits.
Sheila is working on a book titled Starts: An Episodic Memoir. During the same 50 years as the Neon Nevada project, she's filled the first few pages of piles of notebooks—from Big Chief tablets to traditional Composition Notebooks to Reporter's Notebooks, etc.—with extemporaneous fragments that together tell compelling life stories both unique to her and common to us all (especially women).
The result is a book that touches sharp-focused and personal moments in time that when read together create an accessible human experience universality punctuated with pathos and humor, time and place.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: We very much appreciate your interest in the Neon Nevada project and your gentle persistence.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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