The 27th annual Burning Man — a crazy, week-long festival in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada — starts this Monday and everyone is already buzzing about it.
In preparation of the Labor Day weekend festival, a new book "Burning Man: Art of Fire" details the elaborate art structures displayed throughout the past years of the event.
The book, by author Jennifer Raiser with photography by Scott London and Sidney Erthal, is the only authorized collection of the best of Burning Man art with incredible photography.
The book contains more than 200 striking photos and interviews with the artists about their inspiration and how they transport such large structures to the middle of the desert.
With permission from Race Point Publishing, we have 12 of the stunning images here.
Every August, over 50,0000 people gather to celebrate artistic expression and social freedom in Nevada's barren Black Rock Desert. Braving extreme elements, over 200 works of art are created and intended to delight, provoke, involve, or amaze.
New book "Burning Man: Art of Fire" details the many art pieces in the desert, like this piece titled "Evolution Man," which was made entirely of irregularly shaped wooden triangles intended to represent the chaos at the heart of life.
There is ritual surrounding every aspect of the Man’s creation and destruction. He is traditionally 40 feet tall, standing on a tall wooden base that participants can enter and climb. The blueprints for his construction are a closely guarded secret, provided only to the carefully selected crew, largely volunteers, who gather at Burning Man’s Nevada work ranch in June for the process of carefully cutting, assembling, joining, and sanding of the Man with a level of craftsmanship befitting an antique piece of fine furniture.
(Photo: Courtesy Race Point Publishing/Sidney Erthal and Scott London Photography)
Artist Marco Cochrane's "Truth is Beauty" 2013 structure of the female body was held up with steel and mesh.
Cochrane credits the open-minded culture of Burning Man for inspiring the sculptures. He says: “I’m trying to demystify nudity. I see how free women are on the playa, how they can possess a playful energy here that they cannot do in real life.”
(Photo: Courtesy Race Point Publishing/Sidney Erthal and Scott London Photography)
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