Someone once quipped that there’s nothing like autumn in Los Angeles when throngs of tourists come to watch the smog change colors. If the line is funny it’s because there’s more than a little truth to it. Smog is what I expected to see some weeks ago when I took to the skies with my pilot friend, Sam, for a daytrip to the Palm Desert. But it was one of those rare mornings when the haze seemed to lift for a few fleeting hours. As you can see in this photo, we flew just north of the city above the San Fernando Valley. Looking south we could see across the entire Los Angeles Basin. Palos Verde and even Catalina Island were clearly visible in the distance. Aerial photos of L.A. are hard to come by — you need a clear day and a good vantage point. On this particular morning, I was lucky to have both.

You’ve been documenting Burning Man for the last eight years. Why do you find it so compelling to document?

Burning Man is one of the most interesting events in the world, in my experience, but also one of the most difficult to describe. It’s not quite an art festival, not quite a desert rave, and not quite a social experiment, but something of all three. What’s remarkable about it is that it’s organized around creativity and self-expression. The idea is to fully immerse and express yourself in some creative capacity — through building installations, making art, playing music, dressing up, walking on stilts, spinning fire, or simply being beautiful. It means that it’s an endlessly fascinating place where you never know what to expect and surprise awaits you at every turn.

The scale and the ephemeral nature of the event must be hard to communicate to people who haven’t been there.

Yes, there is no way to convey the sheer immensity of Burning Man to someone who has never been there. There is also something rather dreamlike and enchanting about the way it rises out of the open desert for a few brief days only to vanish again after the event is over. Toward the end of the week, much of the infrastructure — including the 40-foot effigy from which Burning Man takes its name — goes up in flames.

Have you noticed it changing and evolving over the years?

When the event got its start 25 years ago, it was little more than a bonfire on a beach in San Francisco. It moved to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada some years later but was still relatively small and unstructured. For many participants, the appeal of the desert was that there were no rules. If you wanted to shoot guns, play with fire, or blow up cars, there was no one to stop you. But as the event grew, so did the need for order and safety. Today the event attracts over 50,000 people from all over the world. It’s highly organized and tightly run, and perhaps a little less fun. Old-timers complain that the anarchy and lawlessness of the early days has been lost.

Do you recognise people when you go back each year?

Yes, a lot of people return to Burning Man year after year. I’ve developed some quite special and enduring friendships there. It’s also allowed me to explore the anthropology of the event — the way people’s perspectives change over time. This is reflected in some of my photographs of artists and their installations, for example, which show how their creative vision has evolved and transformed.

Would you describe yourself foremost as a photographer or a journalist/writer?

I would say that my journalism takes different forms depending on the nature of the project. I started my career in radio and still think that’s the best medium for conversation and storytelling. Over time I shifted to print and devoted myself more to writing articles and books. Print excels as a medium for presenting facts, analysis, and ideas. In recent years I’ve been exploring the possibilities of photojournalism. Though I learned photography as a kid and studied it in college, it’s only recently that I’ve discovered how powerful it can be.

Burning Man has helped me in that process. When I first attended the event, I was struck by the sheer inadequacy of words. Photography seemed like a more powerful medium for documenting the experience. Photographs convey but don’t interpret. At their best, they are very intimate. They capture the imagination and speak to the heart, but without saying a word.

See also:

• Visual News – Scott London Captures the Magic of Burning Man
• Joe’s Daily – Burning Man 2011 by Scott London
• WeWantToLearn.net – Stunning Photographs of Burning Man 2011
• Business Punk – Burning Man 2011
• L’Arbre Monde – Burning Man Par Scott London
• brekend.nl – In beeld: Burning Man 2011

Hungarian-born artist Pali-X-Mano (center) is known for his eye-popping inflatable sculptures. This year’s creation, called “Sundance of the Magical Jungle Parade,” was a full 22 feet high and 55 feet long, barely fitting under the tree canopy of State Street.

Beverly Place Holmes was one of many fabulous dancers in the Hip Brazil dance troupe. Their feathered headpieces in neon green and blue conjured up images of the Rio Carneval.

What’s a parade without kids blowing confetti?

One of this year’s most talked about floats was a huge multicolored
Quetzalcoatl heart made by artist Anado McLaughlin, a resident of San Miguel
de Allende, Mexico, who traveled from afar to be part of this year’s parade.

All you need to participate is a colorful costume and some sunshiny facepaint.

The parade kicked off with a troupe of folk musicians, including a pair of women playing folk flutes, but the music gave way in short order to amplified rock and thunderous samba drumming.

One of my favorite characters this year was a steampunk accordion player in shades.

Our lovely mayor, Helene Schneider, dressed up in facepaint and costume.

Stiltwalker extraordinaire Ahni Radvanyi danced
down State Street with a pair of hula hoops.

Five friends in festive headpieces epitomized the spirit of Solstice.

For more of my photos from the Solstice festivities, go to:

• The complete set of photos from Solstice 2011
• Photos from the 2010 Solstice Parade
• Photos from the 2009 Solstice Parade
• Slideshow of the Solstice Celebrations 2005-2011 [via Flickr]

One of my most rewarding creative projects has been photographing the Burning Man festival each year, something I’ve been doing since 2004. Over the years, I’ve built up a rather extensive portfolio of images from the event. Some of them appear in a new book, in several recent magazine spreads, and as part of an upcoming exhibit at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

Rachel Bowditch’s book On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man, recently published by the University of Chicago Press/Seagull Books, includes several of my photos from the festival. Bowditch is a theater director, performer, and longtime Burning Man participant who teaches at Arizona State University.

In the book, she makes the case that Burning Man can be seen as a contemporary galaxy of happenings, a revival of the ancient Roman Saturnalia, a site for rehearsals of utopia, and a secular pilgrimage. As the festival continues to grow, she says, it’s likely to create new paradigms for performance, installation art, community, and invented rituals that bridge ancient traditions to the twenty-first century.

A recent issue of the French magazine Folie Douce (published in both French and English) features ten of my photographs, along with an essay, on Burning Man. The festival is described as “an artistic utopia that is more than a little out there.” The text is a bit goofy, and not entirely accurate, but I was very happy with the selection and layout of the photos.

I also have two images from Burning Man in a recent issue of Vanity Fair and a double-spread in a forthcoming issue of Marie Claire. Other magazines featuring photos from the event include Elle Décor and Aïshti. In addition, my photos are included in a new 2011 calendar and commemorative photo book, recently published by the Burning Man organization. For more information, visit the Burning Man Marketplace.

You’ll find my image “Lovers” on the cover of the Summer 2010 issue of Common Ground. It’s not the first time I’ve worked with the magazine. The editors featured about a dozen of my photos in a retrospective from Burning Man 2009 last fall, as well as a portrait of Burning Man founder Larry Harvey in the Summer 2009 issue.

I’m excited to have a number of my photographs included in a special exhibition called “Living” opening next month at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen. More details on the museum’s website: www.louisiana.dk

Finally, if you haven’t seen Creative Holly’s wonderful color blog, you’re in for a treat. Holly is a graphic designer with a great eye for color. For a recent post, she asked me to pick out five of my favorite shades of Burning Man and to say a few words about each one. I sampled the colors from some of my more popular Burning Man images. It was an honor and a kick to be a part of her project.

Update, July 5, 2011:

My photo of the fabulous Jesster Canucklehead appears on the cover of Common Ground magazine this month. The summer issue features a preview of Burning Man 2011, along with a lovely photoessay from Ales Prikryl.

You can view the complete issue online at: http://www.sopdigitaledition.com/commonground/

More than a dozen of my photos also appear in the current issue of The Outlook Magazine, China’s leading culture and lifestyle publication. You won’t be able to glean much from the article unless you happen to read Chinese, but you can always enjoy the photos. Go to: http://www.theoutlookmagazine.com/3202/

In some parts of Death Valley, you feel as if you have the whole place all to yourself.

The play of sun and shadow at Zabriski Point is mesmerizing.

Furnace Creek is an otherworldy oasis in the heart of Death Valley.

Badwater was bone dry this year.

One of the curious moving rocks at Racetrack Playa.

It was my first time at the Eureka Sand Dunes, a magnificent place where time seems to stand still.

Here I am climbing one of the Eureka dunes. (Photo by D.H.)

“Art in an Ephemeral Age” is the theme of the Institute of Art and Ideas’ annual Art Festival at Hay in England, and among the many highlights this year is a look at Burning Man, perhaps the world’s preeminent gathering of ephemeral artists. Several discussion forums will tackle the subject of temporal art and performance artist Sarah Appleby will offer her own inimitable take on Burning Man.

Although I’m not able to attend the event, I was invited to exhibit some of my Burning Man photographs at the Globe, a converted church in Hay on Wye, which serves as the festival’s primary venue. The exhibit features over two dozen of my photos covering the last five years of the Burning Man festival. The show runs from November 13-28. More details here.

About a dozen of my photos from Burning Man 2009 appear in the October issue of Common Ground magazine. It’s a Bay Area-only publication, but you can view the full issue online at www.commongroundmag.com. My images begin on page 18.

Check out the spread here.

It was a beautiful and amazing week, wind and dust notwithstanding. Attendance was down by over ten percent this year — a first in the festival’s 24-year history — which made for a smaller and somewhat more intimate event. There was also a sense among many I spoke with that the vibe was more low-key this year. That said, much of the art was world class, the performances first-rate, the wacky fashion and outlandish costumes unforgettable, and the people of Black Rock City, well, more beautiful than ever.

One of the highlights of this year’s event was a small media gathering with, among others, Burning Man founder and director Larry Harvey. Always the man of ideas, he offered his thoughts on how the event has grown over the past quarter century and how it has come to embody a set of unique social, cultural and above all civic values. As Harvey likes to remind us, in his inimitable way, Burning Man is nothing if not a visionary experiment, one that can guide and inspire us to create stronger and more vibrant communities. (For more on this, see Five Things Cities Can Learn From Burning Man, a video clip on Time.com.)

It was an outstanding year for photography. I was part of the documentation team this year, a small crew of photographers charged with capturing the event for the Burning Man organization. In essence, it means I was one of those guys you love to hate on the playa — a photographer with a badge. Still, my approach to photography remains essentially the same it has always been, an attempt to record something of the beauty, the creativity, the whimsy, the madness and the sheer outrageous good fun of it all — if only in a small way to give something back.

I’ve pulled together a set of 100 personal favorites here:

• Burning Man 2009: A Photoessay

 
I recently returned from another trip to the Salton Sea. It was my second time there this year. The lake levels have receded dramatically in recent years and the smell of decay is worse than I remembered. Dwindling inflows and rising salinity levels have transformed the sea from a quiet sanctuary to a toxic wasteland. 

The troubled economy has only exacerbated the problems in the area. In Salton City, the collapse of the real estate market has caused many developers to abandon their housing projects half-finished. “For Sale” signs and tattered “Open House” flags flutter disconsolately in the wind. The place is pervaded by an eerie silence.

I’ve been making a point of visiting the Salton Sea as often as I can in recent years in an effort to document, in some small way, the changes unfolding there. I’ve gathered about thirty of my photos along with some commentary here.

The blaze is still out of control and details are sketchy, but we know that dozens of homes have already been lost. I witnessed some of them go up in flames myself before being forced out by the authorities.

Here are some of my photos:

This image was taken from Painted Cave Road at 3:30 p.m. on May 5, just a couple of hours after the fire began. The trail of the smoke shows the typical sundowner pattern — blowing across the city and out to sea, just as the devastating Gap and Tea fires did last year.

The Jesusita Fire burns in the hills above Santa Barbara, California. Taken from Camino Cielo in the late afternoon on May 5, 2009. The small black dot in the center is a fixed wing aircraft surveying the hotspots.

Smoke and ash darken the sky above Santa Barbara as night falls on day one of the fire.

On the evening of the first day, the fire was still confined to a relatively small area of less than 200 acres, as seen in this long exposure taken from Elings Park.

Thick smoke drifts out over the city on the second day of the fire, as seen in this shot from Las Tunas Road on the Riviera.

The flames rage in the hills perilously close to Santa Barbara’s historic mission. It seems fitting that local firefighters and police would use the spot as an ad hoc staging ground.

Santa Barbara County firefighters gather at the mission to plan their next assault as the fire continues its spread east and south toward the city.

Fanned by strong winds, flames and smoke wreak havoc in the densely populated neighborhood above Foothill Road, just west of Mission Canyon Road.

Huge flames ravage the foothills above Mountain Drive.

Putrid smoke and ash choked the skies and obscured the sun, bathing the city in an eerie red light.

A chopper dumps water over a structure burning on Mountain Drive.

Intense sundowner winds scatter and fan the flames, as seen in this photo taken from Stanwood Drive.

The size and sheer force of the inferno was staggering.

A terrifying firestorm erupts in the hills above Mission Canyon.

A palm tree scorched in the recent Tea Fire stands on a now vacant lot on Conejo Road, as smoke and ash from the new Jesusita Fire darken the skies above.

The eastern edge of the Jesusita Fire was still burning out of control late on Wednesday night. This photo was taken on Ortega Ridge Road in Summerland.

Strong offshore winds continued to fan the flames of the Jesusita Fire above Santa Barbara, as seen in this image taken at Elings Park.

Intense smoke and ash covered the city of Santa Barbara as the Jesusita Fire continued to burn on several fronts on Wednesday night.

Relatively calm winds during the morning and afternoon of day three kept the Jesusita Fire confined mainly to the mountains near Cathedral Peak.

As the afternoon wore on, the winds intensified and fanned the flames westward.

A dark plume of drift smoke could be seen all the way to Ventura and beyond. This photo was taken from Carpinteria at 6:30 p.m. just as the sundowner winds kicked up and stoked the fires anew.

Strong early evening winds fanned the flames and sent black smoke into the skies above Santa Barbara. This image was shot from Ortega Hill at sunset.

As the sun set on the third day of the Jesusita Fire, the sky turned ominously red and ash started falling like snowflakes. The palmettos on Channel Drive can be seen bending in the strong wind.

By 9:00 o’clock on Thursday, the fire was raging out of control across a wide swath of the Santa Barbara foothills, from San Roque Canyon to the east all the way to Highway 154 to the west.

The Jesusita Fire continued to burn in Santa Barbara on Friday, though lower temperatures and relatively calm winds kept the flames confined mainly to the hills above the city. After sunset, the skies were still dark with drift smoke and ash, as seen in this image taken from Butterfly Beach.

By Friday evening, the Jesusita Fire had consumed 8,400 acres and cut a swath some five miles wide from the ridges above Montecito all the way to Painted Cave.

The Jesusita Fire continued to rage in the hills above Montecito on Friday evening.

Flames from the Jesusita Fire lit up the evening sky above Santa Barbara on Friday evening, as seen in this image taken at the Andree Clark Bird Refuge.

Another personal favorite, this one of the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. The three small islands in the foreground make up Anacapa, the large island behind it is Santa Cruz, and in the distance are Santa Rosa and San Miguel islands. The image was taken through the windshield of a Cessna on a return flight from Catalina Island with my pilot friend Sam. A special day.

Today, the tradition of street painting lives on in cities across Europe and in a growing number of communities in North America. 2009 marks the 22nd anniversary of the I Madonnari Festival in Santa Barbara, California. When it started in 1987, it was the only street painting event of its kind in the United States. Today, the three-day event, held each Memorial Day weekend in the plaza in front of Santa Barbara’s historic mission, draws crowds of 25,000 or more from around the world. The art ranges from small chalk drawings by local artists to large-scale street murals by nationally recognized street painters. There is also a special chalk-drawing area for young artists.

I Madonnari is a fundraiser for the Children’s Creative Project, an innovative program that provides visual and performing arts education to public schools in and around Santa Barbara. At a time when arts education has been all but eliminated from school budgets, entrepreneurial communities have to take matters into their own hands. The I Madonnari Festival represents one of the more successful such initiatives — a community-building effort aimed at both making art and ensuring its survival in the local school system.

This photoessay brings together images from 2006-2008. Some of them are included in the cover story of the Spring 2009 Broughton Quarterly, a travel and lifestyle magazine.

View photos »

A personal favorite, this one shot at the Heat the Street Faire in San Francisco, October 2008.