Art fans who aren’t flocking this week to the psychedelic furnace that is Burning Man 2015 can explore the festival from afar in a new 280-page photography book chronicling 16 years of the spectacle.
“Art of Burning Man”, published by TASCHEN, compiles work by Canadian writer and photographer NK Guy, who began shooting the provocative and surreal event’s art installations in 1996. In the hardcover book, Guy captured scenes every year from 1998 to 2014, aiming to reveal the awesome feat of nearly 50,000 visitors creating a temporary city of art, community and performance, which rise up from the barren Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, for one week a year.
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Photography spread in “Art of Burning Man” by photographer NK Guy. Published by Taschen. Image courtesy of Taschen.
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In some of the book’s most fascinating subjects, Guy highlights the grand size of several pieces, including 2011’s The Temple of Transition by David Best and the Temple Crew, which looked like a towering network of holy shrines, and 2013’s CS (Clock Ship) Tere, wherein artist Andy Tibbetts constructed a crowd-funded steampunk-esque metal vehicle that looked like a gritty pirate ship. The piece, which Guy captured carrying two passengers, was outfitted with a huge metal circle and complete with flames firing from a crane-like extension.
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Photography spread from “Art of Burning Man” by photographer NK Guy. Published by Taschen. Image courtesy of Taschen.
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Pages from “Art of Burning Man” by NK Guy. Published by Taschen. Images courtesy of Taschen.
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Guy also caught several moments where Burning Man participants react to the pieces. In a 2014 photograph documenting El Pulpo Mecanico, a giant metal octopus by Duane Flatmo and Jerry Kunkel, Guy includes visitors encircling the flame-spewing tentacles. The artwork’s details, such as teeth, claws and other metal elements, gleam in the firelight.
While artwork seems to be the centerpiece, the book also contains aerial shots of the Burning Man Festival and, of course, of “The Man,” traditionally burned at the festival’s end each year.
“The result is testimony to a realm far beyond the ego, commerce, and power play of mainstream cultural output: It is one of the most pure, uninhibited, expressive centers of our time,” the publisher wrote in a press release.
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Photography spread from “Art of Burning Man” by photographer NK Guy. Published by Taschen. Image courtesy of Taschen.
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Guy is based in London. His other books include "The Photographer's Dictionary," "Mastering Canon EOS Flash Photography" and "The Lens".
A selection of photographs from Art of Burning Man are on view in the exhibition "The Art of Burning Man" at the new Lights of Soho gallery in London. The show runs from July 24 to September 10, 2015.
The Burning Man Festival has been the subject of several nonfiction books, inspired novels and has been the subject of photography books. In the 2011 book, “Desert to Dream: A Dozen Years of Burning Man Photography,” photographer Barbara Traub captured over a decade of festivals. “Burning Man: Art on Fire,” a 2014 book by Jennifer Raiser and Sidney Erthal, features 170 photographs.
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Photo from “Art of Burning Man” by photographer NK Guy. Published by Taschen.
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BASIC FACTS: "Art of Burning Man" by writer and photographer NK Guy can viewed online at www.theartofburningman.com. Published by TASCHEN Books, 2015, 280 pages, hardcover.
"The Art of Burning Man" will be exhibited July 24 to September 10, 2015 at Lights of Soho, 35 Brewer Street, London, UK.
Burning Man 2015 takes place August 30 to September 7, 2015 in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Participants join in the effort to co-create Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis dedicated to art and community. www.burningman.org.
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