Juno Calypso’s best photograph: voyeurism in a pink cold-war bunker
‘It was built as a cold war bomb shelter by an Avon director and a hairdresser to the stars. Now it’s owned by a group of people who want to be frozen cryogenically and live for ever’
For the last five years I’ve kept a list of dream locations to photograph and this was one of them. It’s an underground house in Las Vegas that has its own garden with fake trees, fake sunrises and fake scenery. It went on the market in 2014, and when I spotted it it had been sold for $1m to a “mystery group”. I managed to track down the owners to ask if they’d let me shoot there. Luckily, they were up for it.
The house was built as a bomb shelter in 1978 by Girard Henderson, a director of Avon cosmetics, and his wife, Mary, who was a hairdresser to the stars. They were both in their 70s at the time. It was the age of nuclear terror and the cold war. Maybe they wanted to go out in style?