Asked to describe his recent journey across the American Southwest, photographer Alexander Wagner simply responds, “It’s hard for me to encapsulate the experience.” Something about the names of his stops—particularly Monument Valley and Navajo Nation—strikes a chord, but any description beyond these descriptors themselves is simply too far out of reach.

South by Southwest emerged in 1987 to a crowd of seven hundred regional music fans, many of whom were aching for the spill-off from New York’s New Music Seminar. It has since swelled both in size and intention, with some thirty thousand participants pouring into Austin, Texas, earlier this month for two weeks of music, film, and technology—bringing almost $170 million with them.