The Art of Burning Man

Burning Man is a marriage of art, technology, desert experience, expression, noise, fire and anarchy, but art comes first in more than alphabetical order. It continues to amaze me that while some of the art at BM is trite and sophomoric, some of it is actually very good.

More amazing is that much of this art will exist only at Burning Man. It's built on the desert and in many cases destroyed at the end, by fire or plain old deconstruction. Art lies in official art installations, but also in the camps, ceremonies, the vehicles and perhaps most often the people themselves. (Perhaps the most common form of participation at BM is self-decoration.)

This is only a small fraction of it. Because of my bicycle problems (see main page) I didn't end up getting my camera out to all the locations I would have liked to photograph.

Larry Harvey may take some pleasure in the discovery that the festival itself is a work of art with many component parts.

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One of my tower shots. You can see the glowing plastic cyclops as well as a Phoenix in this view towards north camp from center camp.

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The bone tree, made of cattle bones. Built on the platform that held 1998's theme creature, the "Nebulous Entity." The bone tree did similar wanderings about the Playa, but wasn't as noisy.

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The piano bar. An annual fixture. As you can see, made out of pianos.

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A set of concentric spheres cut from fine metal, at the entrance to center camp. A 2D picture doesn't really show it off well.

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One of the many mobile rooms, this one a bar serving naked people.

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The all seeing pyramid, with a view of the Man in the distance. Note the "FNORD" on the base. (You have to read "Illuminatus!" to understand this.)

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Two adjacent art installations in the desert

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A crew were building this ship at the very edge of the city, almost a mile from the encamped portions. That's John Gilmore and Annie on the deck.

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One of the many art cars. I didn't photograph enough of them this year.

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This camp had a replica of the Man

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The elephant was on a bicycle. A lot of cool things were mounted on bicycles this year.

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A black cloth tube way out in the desert. I have enhanced the inside. You would crawl into it, and come out a very narrow exit at the other side, like being born.

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I was never sure of this guy's name. He's about 30 feet tall and you will see him in some of my other daytime shots. He glowed nicely at night.

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Some cloth art in perfect sunset light.

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The CD sculptors were back, this time with a different creation