The Story of Burning Man

Between late August and September a very weird but very transformative event takes place in the Black Rock desert of Northern Nevada. This is the Burning Man Festival a kind of a vast community-built radical expression space that can best be described as a bizzare mix of Star Wars and Road Warrior. Laid out in a semicircle on the Black Rock Playa, a dry lakebed near Gerlach Nevada, Black Rock City grows from zero to 25,000 souls in the space of a few weeks. Burning Man is also about radical self reliance and reliance on other BM citizens. The playa can be buffetted by tent-tearing, skin-rasping winds gusting up to 80 mph and baked by temperatures over 110 degrees Farenheit but often the desert caresses with warm fragrent winds.

In my view, Burning Man is an expression of the alter ego of our packaged modern society, being all at once personally expressive, permissive, irreverant, non-commercial, non-politically correct and bodily hazardous. In fact, unlike rock festivals and other media-driven events, Burning Man has no center; it is like the Internet itself, a distributed creation of its participants. Can't visualize all this? See our gallery of Burning Man pictures below.

Note: THESE PAGES CONTAIN IMAGES AND TEXT SUITABLE FOR A MATURE AUDIENCE.

NEW! Burning Man 2007 (this will be our last Burning Man)	We skipped Burning Man 2006, instead journeying to Canada to celebrate my father Warren Damer's 80th birthday	Burning Man 2005
Burning Man 1999	Burning Man 2000	Burning Man 2001
Burning Man 2002	Burning Man 2003	Burning Man 2004

More..

A key part of the Burning Man event is the burns, which climax in the torching of a five story high wooden statue of a man. Days of perambulating around the playa get you into contact with the people of Burning Man and their art. To learn more about my escapades, please visit the Damer homepage.

If you have Burning Man pictures, links or commentary that you would like included in these pages, please feel free to contact me. I was joined on this trip by my darling Galen Brandt. Our caravan was led by Bob Gelman, and included many members of our Northern and Southern California Cybertribe.

Other Cool Burning Man Photo Pages