Postcards from the edge

Kristen Peterson

Wednesday, May 3, 2006 | 7:41 a.m.

Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas! But forget the shimmering pools, signature sunsets and trademark neon that define our city in postcards.

Photographer Jonnie Andersen has another story to tell. Same city. Same sights. But from a vastly different angle.

She offers a candid slant that pokes fun at Las Vegas' less-flattering underbelly and love affair with all things faux.

One postcard, showing an image of an airbrushed tropical scene, reads, "Greetings from Las Vegas, Nevada. We gotta lotta fake beaches!"

Another, with a photograph of lascivious female mannequins, says, "Las Vegas: Insulting Feminists since 1950."

Then there is commentary on the drive-thru wedding: "Hey, what do you say you and I jump into the car, roll down to the drive-thru and then grab some burgers for the road?"

"It's interesting to me that nobody has tried to make these postcards," said Andersen, who has been photographing Las Vegas since 1999.

The postcards - droll, sarcastic or just funny - evolved from a personal postcard-themed journal the Nebraska-born artist created to reflect her experience living and working in Las Vegas.

She gained her Vegas perspective as a cocktail waitress at Mandalay Bay and as a server at a 24-hour coffee shop in Paris Las Vegas - where she was fired after photographing her boss yelling at the staff. Since then, Andersen, who earned a master's degree in photography from Yale, has photographed "all the back areas, all of the things people don't see in Las Vegas."

The commercial postcards, she said, began as a joke, something to send her friends that said, "Hey, I'm in Las Vegas and working."

They encouraged her to market the postcards. She is now selling them at Deja Vu Adult Emporium, the Palms and the Hard Rock Hotel, where younger audiences appreciate their edginess.

"Jonnie is one of the more experimental artists in town," said Libby Lumpkin, consulting executive of the Las Vegas Art Museum, who knows Andersen as one of her former students at Yale.

"Her postcards are way more cool and hip than what you see in the tourist shops," Lumpkin said. "And the postcards have the added advantage of making you laugh."

The Hard Rock carries two of the postcards, one that features a shiny pink Cadillac with an "Elvis P" license plate and the slogan: "Las Vegas - Never know who you'll run into."

The other incorporates neon imagery and reads: "Las Vegas: More Bling than you may be used to."

"Those sell good," said Vicki, a salesclerk at the Hard Rock Hotel who declined to give her last name. "Especially the 'Bling.' "

Andersen works as a bartender downtown and teaches photography at the Community College of Southern Nevada. And she remains fascinated with the city, juxtaposing Las Vegas' glitz and grit - shadowing pimps, prostitutes and the down-and-out.

Her affection for Las Vegas is both personal and professional.

"I don't think I could live anywhere else," Andersen said. "This city is just an interesting place to work as an artist. It's wide open to make work and take chances."

Only briefly did she consider living in a larger city.

"It's pretty difficult to say anything new about New York," Andersen said. "New York and L.A., San Francisco, those are cities that are well explained in writing and photography.

"Here, outside of Dave Hickey and his book 'Air Guitar,' there's been no attempt. There are a lot of good artists living here, but Las Vegas has not been their project."