What’s the link between Rome’s ancient cobbles and the neon-soaked madness of Las Vegas?

On the surface, absolutely nothing, one’s a history-rich, empire-soaked cornerstone of Western civilisation, and the other’s a desert-born shrine to excess and fleeting thrills. But in Rome – Las Vegas: Bread and Circuses, Iwan Baan tears up the rulebook, stitching these two wild cities together in ways that’ll leave you reeling. Published by Lars Müller, this isn’t just a photobook, it’s a thought-provoking deep dive into spectacle, power, and the ways architecture shapes our lives and the stories we tell ourselves. Baan, with his flair for urban landscapes, bounces between Rome’s monumental ruins and Vegas’s ‘fake-it-til-you-make-it’ charm, turning both into vibrant stages for human performance. Suddenly, ancient Rome feels alive, and Vegas hints at future ruins still waiting to crumble.

Before you even open the book, you can tell it’s not like the usual photobooks, this one’s a character of its own. The binding’s a bit nuts: stapled like a mag but thick enough to demand a second look. It’s a nod to manga vibes, playing on permanence and fleeting flash. Inside, it’s tactile magic. The shots of Rome are printed on matte paper, rough and textured like the city’s worn stone, while Vegas gleams on glossy pages, dripping in reflection and glitz. It’s not just for show, Baan wants you to feel the contrasts in your hands as much as you see them on the page. And don’t expect page numbers or captions either, it’s a maze designed to spin you about, like getting lost in Rome’s winding alleys or Vegas’s windowless casino sprawls.

Baan’s Rome is layered, messy, and alive, not the postcard-perfect version, but the honest chaos of a city where history and the present constantly collide. He captures the Roman Forum, Piazza Navona, and the Pantheon with tourists milling about, street hawkers peddling their wares, and locals just getting on with it. Every stone and column seems to drag centuries of history with it, and the weight is palpable. One aerial shot of the Pantheon’s dome rising above the sprawl is jaw-dropping, turning the chaos into something sculptural, but just as powerful is the ground-level shot of tourists slumped on its ancient steps, knackered after a day of sightseeing. There’s no gloss or romanticising here. Rome is both grand and weary, a city constantly reinventing itself, not unlike Aberdeen’s own granite blend of old-meets-new.

Las Vegas, on the other hand, is pure spectacle, no pretense of depth, just a thrilling facade of lights, fake monuments, and sprawling casinos trying to outrun the desert itself. Baan’s aerial views of the Strip are dazzling, a riot of artificial splendour, but zoom out and it gets unsettling, suburban grids devouring the sand with a relentlessness that feels like it’s got no end in sight. Then there’s The Sphere, Vegas’s new LED-covered marvel. Since 2023, it’s been lighting up the skyline with absurd animations, one second it’s an eyeball, the next it’s a shimmering planet. Baan captures its surreal dominance over the city, a beacon of Vegas’s over-the-top culture. But where Rome’s people seem burdened by history, Vegas’s crowds are chasing the present—tourists glued to slot machines, couples grabbing quickie weddings, performers hustling for tips.

The title, Bread and Circuses, is a clever nod to Roman poet Juvenal, who nailed it: keep the masses happy with free food and wild entertainment, and you’ve got control. In Baan’s world, not much has changed. Flip through the book and you’ll see Rome’s ancient Colosseum set against Caesars Palace’s faux-Roman kitsch—echoes of spectacle reinvented. It’s sharp, sometimes funny, but it leaves you thinking. Why are we still obsessed with building places to dazzle? Why does spectacle dominate urban life? Baan never spells it out, but his photographs prod you to consider it, nudging you to draw your own conclusions.

This book nods respectfully to Learning from Las Vegas, the 1972 masterpiece by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, which championed the everyday over architectural elitism. Baan continues that legacy, even paying homage with shots of Scott Brown at home, an intimate salute to her influence, but he doesn’t stop there. He digs into Vegas’s symbolic bravado while unflinchingly capturing its grittier underbelly. Then he pivots back to Rome, asking if its grand tales are really so different from Vegas’s wild myths. Is the Trevi Fountain, clogged with selfie sticks, all that different from The Sphere, with its dancing LED emojis? Does it matter if a place is built to endure or just to cash in on the now? Baan doesn’t judge, he invites you to mull it over.

The design of this book is a scene-stealer. That reflective gold cover, the oddball binding, the lack of captions or numbers, it screams for your attention and leaves you adrift, floating between worlds. Essays by Ryan Scavnicky and Lindsay Harris add depth, tackling topics like global tourism, urban performance, and our obsession with turning cities into stages for Instagram feeds. Scavnicky’s point about cities as backdrops for curated lives really hit home. Flip through the book and you wonder—, re the Trevi Fountain and Bellagio’s dancing fountains just two sides of the same coin? Both are there to dazzle and be consumed, their stories sold to the highest bidder.

Baan’s aerial views are breathtaking, for sure, Rome’s chaotic sprawl set against Vegas’s rigid grids, revealing the messy, human sprawl of both cities. But his street-level shots are the real gut-punch: a kitschy Vegas Statue of Liberty dwarfed by skyscrapers, or Rome’s timeless cobblestones hosting makeshift markets. They strip away the grandeur and show these places as they are, raw, flawed, and unvarnished. Rome’s history is heavy, groaning under the weight of preservation, while Vegas reinvents itself at breakneck speed, its flashy facades mirroring our love of simulation.

For me, Rome – Las Vegas isn’t just a stunning photobook, it’s a thinker. It’s rare for a collection of images to make you wrestle with ideas about authenticity, urbanism, and meaning, but Baan pulls it off. He doesn’t romanticise, Rome is burdened by its past, while Vegas is built to be binned but together, they tell a fascinating story about the power of spectacle. The line between real and fake is wafer-thin here, billboards on Roman ruins, The Sphere towering over Vegas—and somehow, there’s beauty in that contradiction. In a world where cities are shaped by tourism and performance, where stories trump bricks and mortar, Baan’s work reminds us to look harder, beyond the facade, and lean into the chaos. It’s as unruly and brilliant as the cities it captures, and that’s why it’s a keeper.

Regards

Alex