Bridget Smith : Mirage

'The towers of lights and the changing skysigns were there all right, but wavering dizzily and fractured into flickering filaments and ripples of pink and electric blue and gold, floating above a reflecting pool of mirage in the purple air. If you sought an image of dissolution of a corrupted civilisation you could hardly have done better; yet the effect was more gentle and poetic than that, more like a dream city dissolving in its own ecstasy.'

– Reyner Banham, Scenes in American Deserta, 1982

Bridget Smith’s photographs document the construction of fantasy, the architecture of entertainment, environments created principally for the consumption of pleasure. She is interested in the way that entertainment is presented to us; the organisation and control that is necessary for fantasies to be made real, places where pretence and reality are confused.

Many of Smith’s photographs focus on the details that go into the industry of escapism – the space, the lighting, the effects of colour and the choice of props. All of these are designed to seduce and allow us to embrace a new role, however momentarily. She sees her work as revealing a somewhat privileged view of this construction, like a tourist observing their surroundings without ever being a part of them.

In recent years, she has returned repeatedly to Las Vegas, a city which is completely in the service of escapism and entertainment, a place which consequently must manipulate and control those who consume its product. In order for it to survive, Las Vegas must constantly re-invent itself and in so doing exposes the façade of fantasy that it strives so hard to achieve. Smith’s photographs find a way to show the place in an unexpected light – they revel in the architecture of seduction and spectacle, their lush colours and glossy surfaces serve to highlight the counterfeit reality of this city in the desert.