Iwan Baan: Rome – Las Vegas

In 2022, the American Academy in Rome organized the From Las Vegas to Rome exhibition that revisited the relationship between Rome and Las Vegas through seventy photographs taken by Iwan Baan. Because of the heavily crafted image of both cities, Vegas and Rome are marked by polar assumptions: We assume Vegas is surreal, thin, dishonest and new and that Rome is authentic, thick, honest and ancient. The exhibition took a transnational look at resonances in architecture, urbanism and the social uses of space between legendary cities in Italy and the United States.

In Rome – Las Vegas, we present a curated selection of the photographs taken by Iwan Baan between 2021 and 2023, which offers insights into both architecture and photography today.

Iwan Baan (*1975) is a Dutch architecture and documentary photographer based in Amsterdam. His photographs document the life of architecture around the world, from informal and traditional housing structures to the growth of megacities, and how individuals, communities and societies reappropriate their built environment to make it their own. Baan has worked with leading architects and architecture studios such as Rem Koolhaas/OMA, Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA, Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl and Tatiana Bilbao. His images are regularly published in newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Domus and Architectural Digest. Baan has authored or collaborated on many books, including among them Rome – Las Vegas: Bread and Circuses (Lars Müller Publishers, 2024), African Modernism: The Architecture of Independence (Park Books, 2015/2022), Momentum of Light co-authored with Francis Kéré (2021), and Brasilia – Chandigarh: Living with Modernity (2010/2023). Baan's work has been exhibited internationally, including a touring retrospective exhibition launched at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein in 2023/2024.