Burning Man

Rating:
Summary: Some great images, but lots missing.
Review: As a longtime participant in Burning Man, I looked forward to the publication of this book with eager anticipation. It's a lovely volume, and has plenty of dramatic and artsy images to show off to your friends who ask "What the heck is this Burning Man thing?"

What's missing however, are many aspects of individual challenge and participation that are central to life on the Playa. The Camps, the communities, the building and the clean up, and the daily life issues we all face living on a blank canvas in the desert are largely ignored in favor of the art aspect of the event. There are very few images of the Burn, the moment of release, and that makes it feel incomplete.

Now, don't get me wrong! This is a lovely book, well-photograped and well-made, it just feels to me more like a slick representation rather than an access point to the whole event. Though, with WIRED involved, that makes sense as well. I love having this book, and would recommend it to anyone who has lived in Black Rock City.

I wouldn't be without this volume on my shelves.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book.
Review: I love owning this book. I love showing it to friends who want to know more about Burning Man. Although you can never understand the event until you experience it, it is great to have such a beautiful book filled with such compelling images. I really enjoyed the essays as well. How each person found something different at Burning Man is the heart of the whole festival. Now is a great time of year to look at the book to get yourself psyched for the big event at the end of August. See you there!

Rating:
Summary: Accurate, Artistic, Amazing
Review: I've been to the event-- first as a citizen and later as part of the volunteer labor force, and I own this book. It's true (as other reviewers have stated) it is not "complete"-- in the sense that its focus is primarily visual. (There is so much more to Burning Man!) But it does a marvelous job with those visuals! Each page turned elicits one of the following thoughts: "Gad! I didn't see that! How could I possibly have missed that?" or something like "Ahhhh, I remember that evening on the Promenade-- and how mysterious the light was..."

The reader who found the images too "extreme," "surreal," and "fringe" has not been there-- or he/she forgot to look around, because this is what you will see if you venture out of your tent... It's easy to come up with remarkable images in this remarkable temporary city, and this book does a fine job of hinting at the world that is Black Rock City. Go ahead, whet your appetite...

Rating:
Summary: Accurate, Artistic, Amazing
Review: I've been to the event-- first as a citizen and later as part of the volunteer labor force, and I own this book. It's true (as other reviewers have stated) it is not "complete"-- in the sense that its focus is primarily visual. (There is so much more to Burning Man!) But it does a marvelous job with those visuals! Each page turned elicits one of the following thoughts: "Gad! I didn't see that! How could I possibly have missed that?" or something like "Ahhhh, I remember that evening on the Promenade-- and how mysterious the light was..."

The reader who found the images too "extreme," "surreal," and "fringe" has not been there-- or he/she forgot to look around, because this is what you will see if you venture out of your tent... It's easy to come up with remarkable images in this remarkable temporary city, and this book does a fine job of hinting at the world that is Black Rock City. Go ahead, whet your appetite...

Rating:
Summary: Accurate, Artistic, Amazing
Review: I've been to the event-- first as a citizen and later as part of the volunteer labor force, and I own this book. It's true (as other reviewers have stated) it is not "complete"-- in the sense that its focus is primarily visual. (There is so much more to Burning Man!) But it does a marvelous job with those visuals! Each page turned elicits one of the following thoughts: "Gad! I didn't see that! How could I possibly have missed that?" or something like "Ahhhh, I remember that evening on the Promenade-- and how mysterious the light was..."

The reader who found the images too "extreme," "surreal," and "fringe" has not been there-- or he/she forgot to look around, because this is what you will see if you venture out of your tent... It's easy to come up with remarkable images in this remarkable temporary city, and this book does a fine job of hinting at the world that is Black Rock City. Go ahead, whet your appetite...

Rating:
Summary: High school yearbook for freaks
Review: Let's face it, when they start making coffee table books about a really cool, artsy, ostensibly underground, non-commercial event, you know the writing's on the wall for said event's hip quotient. So needless to say, I had a real negative feeling about this book before I even looked at it. I was opposed to its existance purely on principal. "Wired is trying to make money off of Burning Man," I thought, incredulous. And the Burning Man people actually approved! Travesty!

I must admit it though -- it's gorgeous. Stunning really. Beautifully designed, with huge, full-bleed photos-both color and black-and-white-on every page. Flipping through the book, there seems to be a good representative sampling of Black Rock City culture circa 1990-1996: Clichéd images of naked, painted bodies dancing. That goddamned Java Cow. Art cars. Colorfully-costumed participants. Moody black-and-whites of the Man. The usual pics of naked people caked with mud. It's even presented in somewhat of an order, with all the daytime images slowly leading into photos taken at dusk. Then there's the requisite sixteen pages of editorial pontificating, before heading off into the book's "climax," which mirrors the climax of the event itself with its final eighteen photos all taken during Burn night.

The images, for the most part, are stunning--although anyone can tell you that it seems damn near impossible to take a bad photo out on the playa. I especially liked Barbara Traub's very artful, often-posed, black-and-whites. Instead of merely documenting the event, she seems to use the playa as her own photography studio, producing incredibly unique images.

As for the editorial content, it makes for a good, hour-long read. Naturally, everyone tries to explain what Burning Man is, without ever really nailing it down. Such is the nature of the event. Larry Harvey spells it all out in his oral history of Burning Man. Bruce Sterling describes his family's vacation at Burning Man, in his hysterical, and ultimately heartwarming piece, "Variation On a Theme Park (Taking the Kids to Burning Man)" Erik Davis' "Here is Post-Modern Space" is alternately intellectual jabbering and snarky commentary. But far and away my favorite piece was "Me, I Didn't Burn A Thing," a refreshingly different perspective of Burning Man from Janelle Brown. She tells it like it is, writing: "I'm stuck in a limbo-land of exhaustion: I can't sleep because I've hardly moved all day, and I can't move because I've hardly slept. I lie in the eerie blue shade of our plastic tarpualin in a semi-lucid state, spray bottle in one hand, gin and tonic in the other." That is so it.

While certainly it's a great conversation piece for suckering in friends to go out with you to Burning Man next year, the biggest reason I like the book is because it functions as sort of a high school yearbook for all the freaks who went to Burning Man in the early to mid '90s.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: Perhaps because I had such high hopes for this book, I was rather underwhelmed when I finally saw it. There are some nice individual photos and it's good to have all the essays in one place, but taken as a whole it's less than stellar. I think another reviewer was on-target by pointing out the problems with the layout and presentation -- it tends to detract from the actual content.

Still, it's nice to have on hand when people ask you "what's that Burning Man thing you went to?"

Rating:
Summary: Much Hype
Review: Pseudo hipster chic is what is most notable about this book. The photographers try too hard to come up with images that seem "extreme," "surreal," and "fringe" -- and end up with what looks more like the vapid chronicles of juvenilia.

Rating:
Summary: Wired could do better
Review: The pictures are good but the layout looks more like 1960's Life magazine. It has none of the innovative style Wired Magazine is noted for. The book could be greatly enhanced by a companion CD with QuickTime movies and more images, history of the event. Too bad Wired blew their chance at a creating a really new and innovative publication covering Burning Man

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't show the REAL Burning Man
Review: What we need is a great book about Burning Man that rather than try to be artistic, instead is simply fun and factual and shows the diversity of Burning Man and how it blends Woodstock with Silicon Valley, Goddess, Nerd, Earthlovers, Nudist, meet in the high desert of Neveda and everyone lives in harmony for a week.

The Burning Man website gives the needed info and all I can do is encourage others to produce a book that can really be called The Burning Man.