About These Photos

 

It's no exaggeration to say the Burning Man festival is one of the world's hippest and most mind-blowing gatherings. It's not quite an art festival, not quite a desert rave, and not quite a social experiment, but something of all three. Held each summer in the remote Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, it's a week-long celebration of free-form creativity and radical self-expression.

Burning Man takes place in a temporary "city" some five miles wide that rises out of the open desert toward summer's end only to vanish again after the event is over. For a few brief days, the ephemeral metropolis known as Black Rock City ranks among the largest communities in the state of Nevada.

It's a place of breathtaking diversity, a coming together of freethinking artists, dancers, performers, DJs, musicians, designers, and exhibitionists of every stripe. It's also a place of whimsical art installations, startlingly decorated art cars, pulsating soundscapes and wacky theme camps, all set against an uncommonly beautiful natural backdrop.

2011 marked the 25th anniversary of Burning Man, and it really felt massive this time — from the huge crowds (nearly 54,000, according to reports) to the sheer size of Black Rock City, which was scaled up this year and was in fact so big that there were large parts of it I never got to see. There were many impressive installations, vehicles, camps and performances in 2011, but I found myself mostly drawn to the beautiful and creative people. This is reflected in the sizeable number of portraits in this year's set.

It was an almost perfect year in every respect. My one complaint is that the weather was a little too nice! Except for a few clouds and a colorful sunset on Wednesday, the skies were clear all week. And while the dust kicked up a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday, it died down almost completely by week's end. This means that finding good light, or even some dust, to shoot by was a real challenge.

It was my eighth consecutive year at Burning Man. It was also my third on the documentation team, 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 (or at least a laminate). Still, my approach to taking pictures at Burning Man 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.

I'm always gratified when non-burners appreciate the photos, but my primary goal is to share them with those who were at the event, if only in a small way to give something back.

As in previous years, I shot all the images digitally with a pair of trusty Canon DSLRs using a combination of lenses. The cameras took a beating, as always, but they performed flawlessly all week — all the more impressive given that my "classic" 5D has been out to the playa six years in a row.

I get a lot of questions about my gear, and a lot of people wonder how I protect it in such a harsh environment. The answer is I don't. For an interesting discussion about this, have a look at the thread on Flickr titled How do you keep your camera from getting dusty at Burning Man?

For more on my Burning Man photography — what first inspired me to get into it, how my approach has evolved over the years, and what equipment I use — read an interview I did with Paul Caridad Sanchez in Visual News: Scott London Captures the Magic at Burning Man. Another interview appeared in It's Nice That.

As always, I'm grateful to the many wonderful people of Burning Man who freely consented to let me photograph them in the act of dancing, stilt-walking, hooping, making art, or simply being beautiful. I don't take that permission for granted. It takes a special patience to put up with tiresome photographers sticking their equipment in your face, pointing lenses at your tattoos, your necklaces, your derriere. My art, such as it is, would not be possible without that open consent and participation. So thank you.

If you want to be in touch, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to connect on Facebook as well, where I have a few additional photos and where you can leave comments and criticism.

Photo by Douglas Hooper