I’ve always wanted to attend Burning Man, but due to time conflicts, a fear of not being artsy enough, and other minor reasons, I’ve never attended. After seeing Carie Camacho's Flckr photostream, I was excited to ask Carie Camacho about her experiences at Burning Man. She was generous enough to share her story and let her images be posted here.
From Carie:
My first burn was in 2000. I went with about 20 people I worked with at the time. For the first time since my daughter was born (she was five at the time) I was not a mother, a wife, or an employee. It took a few days in the desert to relax and realize there were no emails to reply to or phone calls to return. I think I was two or three days into it when I saw a guy marching across the playa in a suit carrying a briefcase and screaming into a cell phone (that got no service) when it really sunk in where I was.
I have never been involved in any of the large scale installation art. Those pieces are funded by BurningMan grants. I'm not sure exactly how that system works, but I know most of those pieces are planned out a year, sometimes more, in advance. They are all pretty spectacular.
2007 was my last burn. The unofficial count that year was well over 50,000 people. Someone hung himself a few blocks down from us. The drug use was more rampant than I have ever seen. It was just too much. For the first time I felt like a total square. I think I have seen and experienced everything I wanted to over the years. I've been to the festival seven times. It's enough for me.
For the first few years I went to the festival I drove my VW Passat with a utility trailer hitched to the back. I swore I would never be one of those assholes that drove down in an RV. But in 2005 we had the chance to travel in one, and the Passat wasn't doing so well, so I caved. It was as shitty as I thought it would be, and then some. But you can't get away from them now. It used to be that RV's were completely frowned upon, but now they are the norm. Gone are the days when all you saw for miles were colorful tent structures blowing in the wind.
When you are in the thick of it at Burning Man, there is really no way to keep your senses from being bombarded. You just have to take it all in and go with it. If you can't, just walk toward the mountains.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cariecamacho/1348258749/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cariecamacho/
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=center%20camp%20bicycle%20arch&w=4927975...
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