This was my 7th year at that thing in the desert. I was honored to be a part of the team who built the art installation called The Solacii. I created their crowdfunding video, documented the creation of the piece and joined them in the desert to cover the build and unveiling of the structure. It was truly wonderful to be a part of such an incredibly talented team. I was also able to document some of the wilder sides of the burn. It was so wonderful to discover being at burning man in a new way, being a part of the build. A part of the art. That has always been a dream of mine.
My favorite thing to photograph while I'm out there are the epic skyscapes that occur. From intense storms to wildly colorful sunrises and sunsets to starry nights with epic structure fires. There is such madness out there, to exist in landscape that we don't have much business in being in. But yet, we do - and we do so in style. We build art, we build communities, we feed each other, we nourish our souls and then we pack it all in and burn down. Not everything is burned, but the man and the temple are my favorite things to watch burn. I always like to focus on how all those little embers rise up into the sky. Representing life, materials used, trees that no longer exist, countless numbers of hours that people poured into building these pieces. And the energy of people who saw them, walked through them, left memories, tokens, writing on the wall - all of those emotions being released into the sky, into the world.
It always reminds me that nothing lasts forever. That beauty is fleeting. But that feeling - that feeling of witnessing, of participating, feeling that kind of wild freedom that sets your soul on fire because you saw something so astounding, so moving, so different... That feeling will last a lifetime.
I present Burning Man 2017
Featuring The Solacii Team, Kaleidoscope Coffee Roasters, Bump Bed Crew and the in between.
