Ell Hammond Photography

In 2023 I had the pleasure of travelling to Nevada for a month with the University of Derby and in partnership with Nevada State University to make work based on our time there. This is the work I produced.

Ghosts have been an increasing iconography and interest in my work, representing an unknown feeling of not belonging, and not feeling right in my own gender and skin. In this iteration of the ghost, I reflect on my time in Las Vegas in January 2023, the atmosphere and the people, and saw how much of an effect Vegas has on its community. This city built, impossibly, on desert land shouldn’t exist, it should be a ghost town. Yet it isn’t, it’s bright, it’s vibrant, it’s bizarre and people live here. The ghost appears here representing the people and the gambling culture of Nevada, how the bright lights and inviting atmosphere has often made people ghosts of themselves, they’ve lost money, lost fame, lost family, and lost belongings in a city that was once theirs. It’s a dangerous side to Vegas.

As a group we also created an experimental video based on the phrase ‘What We Left in the Desert’.