Las Vegas, Nevada is both the backdrop and the centerpiece of photographer Marshall Scheuttle’s latest project, “Morningstar”. Soon to be published as a photobook by Kris Graves Projects, the series offers a portrait of the city through Scheuttle’s eyes. Over the course of five years spent bartending by night and photographing by dawn, he perused the Las Vegas valley with his 8×10 camera, setting out with what he describes as “the romantic notion that I could tame it with my view camera, and in doing so chronicle this wild and free place in America.”

In reality, the Las Vegas Scheuttle set out to photograph was a fiction of his own making: “As the place changed me, the work became clearer. There would be no documentation of Las Vegas, the narrative was one that spoke to my experiences, the people and places I sought out and the moments we experienced together in the back room bars and hideouts. The undeniable excitement and love I had for each and every one of them, kindred spirits in this neon dance under a silent desert sky. I found myself photographing moments on the edge of looming actions or seemingly showing violent or somber events passed. In the end, the work is my story in the Las Vegas valley, one wrought with a blurred line between fact and fiction, night and day, and the inescapable piercing lights of a towering oasis.”

See more from “Morningstar” below!