One sees fountains (real and simulated) all over Las Vegas, Nevada

A constant irony in this arid location where rain falls sporadically.

Exhortations to relax and be entertained — to indulge yourself — assail your every conscious moment.

Winning is definitely not guaranteed.

Here there are probably as many ways to lose your shirt (or blouse) as there are electrical and wireless synapses in the whole of this spread-out metropolis. Containing two hundred thousand slots, thousands of card games and sports books connected to more than a hundred casinos where doors never close, there are abundant reasons why the place has earned the nickname: City of Lost Wages.

Striking women (often in sultry undress) show up everywhere on billboards, or they can be spotted in daylight pumping gas into swanky automobiles. They serve in lounges and perform on stages large and small.

Here the palms grow tall in the foreground while marching colored lights form backdrops. The boulevards sparkle. Pedestrians stream across bridges from one fantastic complex of buildings to another, all of which have temporarily risen from the desert, and inevitably will explode and collapse into smoke and debris.

A lively human energy runs parallel to the city’s colossal consumption of hydroelectric and solar power. The buzz infects even the housekeeping staff, who seem to share the excitement and glamour of the place while laboring to change sheets and clean toilets.

What image might symbolize Las Vegas — slicing to the core of this dubiously-real place with a single photograph?

A maid seductively refreshing a luxurious room with a view;

Or a picturesque plate of food created by Vegas chefs?

A roulette wheel madly spinning at long shutter-speed perhaps;

Or a woman’s jeweled and manicured fingers gripping the controls of a gambling machine?

The World Famous Strip from the air perhaps, or

The Strip from ground level looking up, its built environment seeming as monumental as a temple compound in ancient Egypt?

I chose bare infrastructure.

Every town depends on it, however Las Vegas lives and breathes networks and has voracious appetites exceeding (it would seem) all other such places. The maze of circuits and their electronic controls — supported in our image by a complicated metal framework — could stand in for the bones, the circulating blood, and the dreams of the city.