Desert to Dream: A Dozen Years of Burning Man Photography, Revised Edition

Book Synopsis: This groundbreaking, eyewitness account of this iconic festival bursts with striking color photography. A collectible coffee table book for pop culture and Burning Man fans.

The Black Rock Arts Festival (otherwise known as “Burning Man”) has become an annual pilgrimage for a generation of artists to the dry alkali flats of northwest Nevada's Black Rock Desert during the last days of summer. On Saturday night, Black Rock City emerges as Nevada's fifth-largest metropolis while attendees burn a four-story tall wooden sculpture of a “man” striped in neon and embedded with fireworks.

This trailblazing photo collection features an introduction by award-winning filmmaker Les Blank, foreword and afterword by Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, epilogue by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a contribution by Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy. More than 150 sensational color and black and white photographs bring to life an incredible event that now attracts 80,000 people every year.

This book is an unprecedented photographic record of a decade of Burning Man celebrations -- from its infancy as a performance art exhibition in the late 80’s to its explosion as a pop culture, community-driven phenomenon today. Photographer Barbara Traub captures the sacred and profane through photos of otherworldly artifacts, structures, and costumes that defy description, and comments upon these dynamic visions with captions that go behind the scenes. “This book is a landmark,” remarked Larry Harvey, the founder and director of Burning Man. “It does more than illustrate a so-called counter-cultural event. Rather, it exhibits the integrity and singleness of vision of a complete work of art. I think that a sophisticated public is ready for this. It is among the first to get things right. It does not merely display Burning Man in pictures or explain it in words: it manifests the spirit of our culture through its style.”

“Barbara Traub first photographed the effigy of a man set ablaze every year at Burning Man in 1994. Her first shots became the iconic image on her book cover.” - Time Read more