Burning Man: Art in the Desert (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nash's understated black and white photography gives an unexpected and intimate glimpse into Burning Man, the art-centric festival-community ("essentially a temporary city... of up to forty-thousand people") erected on an isolated stretch of Nevada desert every fall. Though it's known as much for hedonistic carousing as for art (if not moreso), Nash has been sleeping through the all-night parties for more than a decade so he can rise early and shoot artwork in the desert's morning light. More than a hundred of his stripped-down images are collected here, a strange and beautiful catalog of the structures, vehicles, monuments and performances dreamed up in the middle of nowhere. Writer and psychonaut Daniel Pinchbeck provides a brief introduction, but Nash's images are better complemented by his own plainspoken commentary, which focuses on the hard realities of putting on an event of Burning Man's magnitude: hazardous road trips, labor-intensive construction, infrastructure management, crowd control and the final clean up. Nash's singular, idiosyncratic perspective proves charming and frank; for instance, Nash isn't shy about tensions within the community (mainly between those who come early to build and latecomers who take the effort for granted). It's easy to imagine a lively collaborative volume on the festival, but by keeping things restrained, Nash provides a personal tour that gets to the heart of the spectacle.
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Product Description

For one week in August the Burning Man Festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert brings people together in a spirit of self-reliance and creativity. Art has become the defining feature of Burning Man, as the festival continues to be a testing ground for a growing circle of artists seeking engaged audiences. Their most compelling works are large-scale constructions that are burned at the end of the festival, and radically altered vehicles, or “art cars.”

Art at Burning Man, like the experience of being there itself, is a way of being outside routine existence: People return home rejuvenated and inspired to seek ways to express the spirit of the festival in their everyday lives. For more than a decade, A. Leo Nash has been creating a photographic document of this work, and in his photographs we see the wellspring of a new art movement.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (June 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810992906
• ISBN-13: 978-0810992900
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 8.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #312,618 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary view of an indescribable place, May 13, 2007

By	C. Moore (CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nash is a great photographer, with a clear, timeless vision that you can literally feel. His photographs hold you and keep you looking into them, farther. This is another volume in the work of our best contemporary photographers, and an extraordinary record of art and a place we might never have otherwise seen.

Burning Man is often described as being indescribable, and for good reason. So much of the art created there is ephemeral, lasting just a few days before burning to the ground. An entire city of 30,000 rises, falls, and disappears. To some, it feels like a heartbeat, and to others, a lifetime. To describe it in words is nearly impossible, when so much quickly becomes the elusive memory of memories.

Through Nash's remarkable photographs, we see a decade of visionary work and creativity that physically existed for only a moment. Whether you've been to Burning Man or not, this book will fill you with awe, and longing for the place.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A nice concept marred by poor execution, April 28, 2009

By	Wintertiger - See all my reviews

I wish this book had been better. Sadly, there is a strange unnatural quality to the photographs that has nothing to do with the event and everything to do with the photographic choices and skills.

The photos are quite dark and underexposed, in a way that does not work. Leo Nash apparently prefers to stay well away from tones that are anywhere near white. The result is that numerous art works look dilapidated, junky and dirty. Similarly, his tendency to use a fairly dark sky tone makes the scene appear overcast and gloomy when a close examination often reveals it to be bright, broad daylight.

Quite a few of of the photos have clumsy and painfully obvious dodging and burning, resulting, for example, in brightened haloes around the frame of a hammock car, and more that a few skies with sharp lines across them between unnatural dark and light levels. Moreover, the efforts to selectively lighten and darken put various elements out of balance with each other.

Compositionally, the photos are plain, rarely bringing out the best in the art work. There also tends to be a lot of distracting clutter in the background: negative space is rarely used well. Parts of the art works get cut off for no apparent reason. Sometimes the photos include the shadow of the photographer, though not in a Lee Friedlander artistic way. Strange use of wide angle lenses makes for some very bowed horizons (the concave horizons are really bad) as well as distorted subjects. People are rare, and somehow they never seem happy or appealing (they more often seem vaguely repulsive). You will not find anything of the communal atmosphere at the actual event. You will not find yourself motivated to go into the hot, dusty Nevada desert in high summer to see this stuff.

I hate to say it, but color would have been a better choice. Yes, I know, everyone shoots color at Burning Man, but black and white, especially as Mr. Nash did it, gets the opposite of the vibrance people go the Burning Man to experience. Basically, black and white emphasizes other compositional elements, so the gritty texture of the dirt and building materials really stands out and makes them seem repulsive without color. Strangely enough, he chose color for the cover.

The pictures are much better than Daniel Pinchbeck's writing, which despite being fairly brief, is grandiose, flatulent buffoonery. Leo's writing is not so overblown and pretentious as Daniel's.

I found this book a bit of a disservice to the art and the event. Almost any online album of Burning Man photos is more exciting.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good photos deep in drivel, October 12, 2007

By	Mary "jypsee" (Florida) - See all my reviews

I bought the book because I like black and white photos and because my son has attended Burning Man and worked for the corporation that creates the event in 2003. My intention is to give him the book; but, I decided to read the text before sending it off. The intro is long winded drivel (and at the time of this writing, the writer of the introduction has wasted valuable real estate on this product page with some self serving crap from his blog; who wants to wade down the page to get to the real reviews?) and the text by the photog is self indulgent in the style of the "burners." The notion that this event is somehow "spontaneous" is what really makes me laugh. A more apt description would be something on the order of "this is my personal journal and musings on this ongoing "spontaneous" event, plus some photos" The pictures are well made, and the presentation with a slipcover is nicely done, which is what rescues the book.