Desert to Dream

The Black Rock Arts Festival (a.k.a. "Burning Man") is an annual pilgrimage for generations of artists to the alkali flats of northwest Nevada's Black Rock Desert. Culminating over America's Labor Day weekend, this weeklong event attracts more than 50,000 people. During summer's final days, they celebrate imagination and transformation on this expansive canvas, contained by a ring of mountains and a very big sky. On Saturday night, Black Rock City emerges as Nevada's fifth largest metropolis as attendees burn a four-story tall wooden sculpture of a "man", striped in neon and embedded with fireworks.

This is a groundbreaking visual collection of twelve years of Burning Man, from its inception as a display of alternative art to the recognition of its global influence on contemporary culture. Photographer Barbara Traub captures the zeitgeist in a cornucopia of artifacts, structures, and costumes that defy description. Contributions from filmmaker Les Blank, Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, Star Trek's Spock, Leonard Nimoy, and beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti help to illuminate Traub's unique perspective on this dynamically evolving event.

This revised edition includes 16 more pages and two-dozen new photographs.