Aaron Mayes and the side of Las Vegas no one sees

Aaron Mayes stands in front of the exhibit.
(Photo by: Darian Bazile)

The documentarian photographer

by Darian Bazile

The Built exhibit, hosted on the first floor of UNLV's Lied Library, showcases the development of Las Vegas through photographs. The photographer is Aaron Mayes, the current Special Collections curator for visual materials. Much of his work focuses on collecting the visual history and culture of the city.

Mayes, a photographer based in Las Vegas, worked for local newspapers and currently works for UNLV. The Built exhibit, his latest project, reflects his desire to showcase the unseen parts of the city that goes unappreciated to the outside world.

"Most of my photographic education came from the school of hard knocks," Mayes said. "I learned from working at newspapers and pounding it out that way."

 Mayes' photograph of UNLV punter Joe Kristosik
for the Las Vegas Sun in 1998.

Mayes first worked on the Henderson Home News, a defunct local paper. He originally worked as a writer, covering Henderson government agencies. His brief writing career transitioned into a career as a newspaper photographer that followed him for the rest of his life. He later moved up to working on the regional Las Vegas Sun newspaper.

"I spent an awful lot of time in court, photographing criminals," said Mayes, reflecting on his career during the newspaper days. "A little bit of sports too, a little bit of everything, just kind of, whatever you see in a newspaper."

Mayes worked for the Las Vegas Sun for a decade before moving on to work for UNLV. He worked for UNLV Photo Services, a service that takes promotional photos for the university. Advertising brochures, UNLV's websites and outside news services covering UNLV related topics use photos the service puts out.

Mayes worked for the school as a photographer for 13 years before advancing to his current position as curator for visual materials for UNLV Special Collections, where he has been for two years. As a curator, his work consists of three parts. The first consists of taking pictures himself. The second aspect involves collecting photographs from others to build up collections, like the recent Clinton Wright Photograph Collection. The third deals with providing technical support and training for UNLV Libraries Digital Collections Department, which digitizes photographs and documents for future posterity.

"Any good library will have similar materials," said Julian Kilker, visual literacy teacher and Mayes' friend. "But what makes Special Collections really special is that it focuses on issues and topics that's important to us, to this city."

UNLV Special Collections documents many things pertaining to Nevada's history and culture. As far as visual elements are concerned, the collection holds photo sets of the construction of the city and Hoover Dam, physical copies of various promotional Las Vegas magazines, copies of old casino restaurant menus and many more.

The university and Mayes collects these materials not for artistic merit, but rather, for their merit as historical and cultural documents.

"What I find interesting about Aaron is that he's a good visual researcher," Kilker said. "I argue that he's a visual anthropologist in some ways."

The Built exhibit on the first floor of the Lied Library stands as a testament to Mayes' photography, more of a showcase of Las Vegas than an art gallery. The Un-Built exhibit, a related exhibit hosted on the third floor, consists of architectural drawings and planning documents of buildings that were never built.

Much of Mayes' body of work focuses on Las Vegas and the surrounding communities. A part of that comes from having to cover the city in local newspapers and the university. However, another large part that motivates this interest is the idea of covering Las Vegas in ways that it is not. Mayes dislikes how outside focus on Las Vegas exclusively focuses on the Strip.

"There was a production crew from England or somewhere, they came here and was doing some work. Their helper kinda said to them, "hey, why don't you look at this, why don't you look at that." And they were talking about the suburbs and other interesting parts of town..." said Mayes, giving an anecdote. "And the person said, "hey, I didn't come to tell that story, we came to tell the story of the Strip." And that's what people think of Las Vegas completely. But it's not."

Mayes wants to fight against that view and the lack of interest toward areas outside of the Strip through his photography. The Built exhibit reflects his desire to tell the story of Las Vegas outside of the Strip. Much of the Built exhibit focuses on the communities and architecture surrounding the Strip, with little focus toward the actual casinos. More ordinary subjects dominate the exhibit, documenting traffic congestion and landscapes of areas outside of the Strip, telling the normal stories of Las Vegas that goes untold. A notable part of the exhibit, his coverage of Sahara Avenue, consists of photographs taken from one end to the other to give visitors a sense of its development.

The history of Mayes' family in Nevada stretches as far back as the 1800s, in the days of the Comstock Lode and the accompanying silver rush. His family moved into the Las Vegas Valley in the late-1940s, specifically settling in the Henderson area. His great grandfather and grandfather worked in a Henderson power plant.

For Mayes' personal history, he bounced between the northern and southern parts of Nevada for his education. He originally pursued a psychology degree, yet, when he graduated, he emerged from UNLV with a degree in art.

Outside of his work, Mayes has been married for 25 years with three kids. With frankness, Mayes admitted that he did not have any hobbies.

"Photography is more of a way of life," said Mayes, identifying as a man that throws himself deeply into his work.

A photo Mayes took for UNLV Photo Services, showcasing a UNLV event.

Mayes does not consider favorites with regards to his work. He believes that photographers should be looking to the future instead of ruminating on the past.

"What you've done and how it fits in some historical context or art context or whatever, that's for other people to decide," he said. "I'm just out making images every day, trying to make a better collection."

As for his future, he wishes to continue work on the subject matter of the Built exhibit. Similar to his Sahara Avenue project, he plans to document Eastern Avenue end-to-end. He considers the idea of bringing the Built exhibit abroad and building upon the Built exhibit for a "2.0" version suited for other venues.

Mayes' recent photography can be found on his Instagram and personal website.

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