Obsidian & Neon: Building Black Life and Identity in Las Vegas is a pictorial-essay installation featuring black-and-white photography by award-winning photojournalist Jeff Scheid, paired with narrative profiles curated by writer Erica Vital-Lazare. Together, the images and stories honor community leaders who are actively shaping identity and cultivating Black life in Las Vegas.
The project began in 2018 as a tribute to the achievements and often-untold experiences of Black life in the neon city. Since then, exhibits and related events have been presented at the Clark County Government Center, the Nevada State Museum, Nevada State University, and the Sahara West Library. This momentous iteration, celebrating the opening of the new West Las Vegas Library building and gallery, highlights featured community members with enduring ties to the Historic Westside.
Jeff Scheid: Describing himself as “a visual anthropologist photographing Nevada and Las Vegas,” Jeff is a celebrated photographer whose most recent photo-installation chronicled the history and day-to-day life of the Fallini family, owners of Nevada’s oldest working ranch in Nevada. Titled “Ranching in the High Desert.” Jeff has photographed the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang and Chicago mobster Tony “The Ant” Spilotro.
Erica Vital-Lazare: Artist, writer, and professor of creative writing and marginalized voices in dystopian literature at the College of Southern Nevada; Erica is a recipient of grants and awards from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Hilliard Endowment, the Virginia Council of the Arts and the Nevada Arts Council. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry appear in Sojourner, Thrice Fiction, Callaloo II, The Citron Review, Literary Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review and The Baffler. She is a cofounder of the nonprofit the Obodo Collective and its annual Our Mothers’ Gardens Book Festival at Obodo Urban Farm. She is also cohost of the podcast The Women Who Saved History and editor of the literary series Of the Diaspora, published by McSweeney’s.
On exhibit at West Las Vegas Library from December 9, 2025 through March 1, 2026.
West Las Vegas Library
1861 N. MLK Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89106
Regular Hours
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