Product Description

"Barbara Traub captures an expansive desert of everything but normality where monstrous beings of all shapes, colors and sizes congregate each year with contraptions that challenge everyday familiarity."-Sidelines Online

"The event is more than the sum of its art cars, kinetic sculptures or suntanned bodies clad in body paint and glitter (and sometimes not much else)."-Wired

Attended by 20 people on a San Francisco beach in 1986, the "Burning Man" festival has mushroomed into a desert pilgrimage for 40,000 people annually. For one week, Burning Man qualifies as Nevada's fifth-largest city, and climaxes on Labor Day weekend with the burning of four-story tall wooden "man."

This is an unprecedented photographic record of an evolving decade of Burning Man, from its infancy as a performance art exhibit to its explosion as a pop culture destination. Photographer Barbara Traub captures the sacred and profane, from inspired costumes to otherworldly artifacts that defy convention.

Traub describes the dynamic scenes along with contributions from filmmaker Les Blank, Burning Man founder Larry Harvey, and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Now a global network fueled by the Internet, Burning Man is the twenty-first century's ultimate celebration of the human imagination.

Barbara Traub is a critically acclaimed photographer residing in San Francisco, California. Her art has exhibited internationally, and her Burning Man photographs have appeared in Wired, Spiegel Online, Photo District News, San Francisco Chronicle, and New Age. Chief photographer for HardWired's book Burning Man, she curated Photo SF's 2004 "Art of Burning Man" gallery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #130397 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From Booklist
Traub presents 10 years' worth of lavish color photography on the annual counterculture festival, Burning Man. The first Burning Man was held on a San Francisco beach and attended by a couple dozen people. Today it takes place in Nevada's Black Rock Desert and is known as the Black Rock Arts Festival. Every year Black Rock City is erected around a giant wooden statue that is immolated to much fanfare at the end of a weeklong bacchanal. Traub's images capture the festival's spirit in lots of zany costumes and art installations celebrating off-kilter takes on contemporary culture and the participants' flights of fancy. The slight accompanying text carries the highest -countercultural-subcultural pedigree, thanks -to the authors: celebration film documentarian Les Blank and Beat poetry icon Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Of course, there are some naked folk in the photographs, though their nudity is hardly gratuitous, what with all the body paint and artfully applied mud. Good visual fun and countercultural documentation, this is vibrant stuff in these grim days, a must for pop-culture collections. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Holiday Bookshelf - Top 10 Pick: Critically acclaimed photographer Barbara Traub takes readers on a stunning visual journey that brings to life 10 years of Burning Man" -- Nevada Magazine, 2006

"This book is a landmark. 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...It does not merely display Burning Man in pictures or explain it in words: It manifests the spirit of our culture through its style." -- Larry Harvey, co-founder and director of Burning Man, 2006

Barb Traub has been going to Burning Man for a long time. Her book, Desert to Dream: A Decade of Burning Man Photography, chronicles a changing festival over the last decade. If you need some visuals to jog your memory of festivals past or won't be able to attend this year, her book provides a visual exploration of Burning Man, which after all, began as an art exhibition, of sorts. -- SFist.com

Ten years ago Traub worked on assignment for Wired's cover story on Burning Man, was chief photographer for HardWired's book Burning Man that was published the following year, and shot for Wired News in 2001. -- Wired News

Traub's evocative photography displays the human connections established by the attendees with each other, the art they produce and the beautiful landscape of the Nevada desert. A particular aspect of humanity's capacity for artistry is what Traub brings us. From the sensitive nude photographs of people in all manner of color and caked in mud to cars retrofitted to be art on wheels and the temporary temples which dot the desert floor. -- TakeGreatPictures.com

Review
Traub's evocative photography displays the human connections established by the attendees with each other, the art they produce and the beautiful landscape of the Nevada desert. A particular aspect of humanity's capacity for artistry is what Traub brings us. From the sensitive nude photographs of people in all manner of color and caked in mud to cars retrofitted to be art on wheels and the temporary temples which dot the desert floor.

Customer Reviews

Best book on Burning Man I've seen yet
I remember Barbara Traub's photos from Wired magazine and their book in the late '90s, but her new title far outshines that and all earlier attempts to chronicle this scene. Sure, there have been other documentary efforts to help readers wrap their minds around the crazy compulsion to find oneself out in Black Rock City. But as they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Certainly there are a ton of snapshots now on Flickr, but here are images few alive have captured and a unified body of work from a true professional. Traub's collection is breathtaking in composition, thoughtful in its theme, and unrivalled in scope. Plus the list of contributors is a who's who, from poet-laureate Ferlinghetti, the iconic Spock, and filmmaker Les Blank to the man himself Larry Harvey. Each has something unique to offer, and, when taken together, combine to really capture the kaleidescopic essence of being there.

Every Burner I've shared this book with has been truly impressed. It is a beautifully designed package which is also a great value, and (unfortunately) bound to inspire even more newbies to join the fun.

visually stunning
Having attended Burning Man twice (in 2003 and 2005), and having connected to the amazing experience that it represents for the mind and the body, I am glad to see a book that is capable of capturing most of the images that trigger our senses. Good any time of the day ... it's best alongside your breakfast, helping you carrying the 'burn every day' philosophy throughout your day and evening.

A Photographic Treat
Desert to Dream is a remarkable accomplishment -- a stunning tapestry of images and words that appears in essence to be a mystery play. I am amazed at the visual, emotional and spiritual complexity of her work that evokes deep contemplation. The book is very well laid out and I like how the diptychs are paired, even in some instances where there is a b&w and color photo side by side. Traub's sense of style and composition is dynamic and goes way beyond the usual ways of seeing. Congratulations on such an extraordinary book.

Ellen Bascom
Houston, TX