Burning Man: Art on Fire

REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

Text by Jennifer Raiser
Photography by Scott London

Published by Epic Ink,
an imprint of The Quarto Group

Burning Man: Art on Fire is an award-winning collection of the extraordinary art and photography of Burning Man. The book showcases two decades of dazzling artworks, massive installations and ingenious “mutant vehicles” from the annual convergence in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. It also features fascinating stories, interviews and artist profiles. This newly revised and expanded edition is the winner of two Indie Book Awards, including “Best Coffee Table Book of the Year.”

This book offers vivid proof that a great festival can also produce great art. It’s full of wonders and there are beautiful, startling images to be found on every page. A book that will enrich the soul and blow your mind.

Tatler Magazine

Fascinating, joyful, awe-inspiring. Provides insight into the planning and detail that go into maintaining Burning Man’s integrity and safety while celebrating its spirit of creativity and participation.

Library Journal

One of the best books about Burning Man and one of most comprehensive collections of Burning Man photography and art. This hardcover tome includes more than 200 photos. A great display piece or gift.

Rolling Stone

Burning Man: Art on Fire showcases ingenious, breathtaking and downright wacky installations by amateur and professional artists from around the globe. The book should give those who’ve never attended Burning Man a newfound appreciation for the gathering, if not the way artists use the wide-open playa as a metaphor for the infinite possibilities of the imagination.

San Francisco Chronicle

Burning Man is a week-long exercise in creativity and consciousness-raising — not to mention letting go of boundaries. This hefty collection of more than 200 images may only capture a small flicker of the clever, awesome, and occasionally weird world of Burning Man art. But as armchair experiences go, it is both inspiring and simply beautiful to dip into.

Geographical Magazine

A fantastic art book packed with full-page color images, packed into an oversized coffee-table creation accessible to art collections and individual fans of Burning Man culture alike. Unreservedly recommended [for] Burners, artists, creative thinkers, and anyone who has ever imagined a visit to Burning Man — one of the most extraordinary places on earth.

Midwest Book Review

The new Burning Man: Art on Fire is here. It’s the third edition of a book that first appeared in 2014. The fact that it’s still in print after all these years — and worthy of a comprehensively revised and expanded edition — is a testament to the astonishing impact Burning Man has had on the art world. It also speaks to the growing influence of its incredible community of artists, many of whom are profiled in the book.

Art on Fire was written by my longtime collaborator Jennifer Raiser and includes a foreword by Burning Man CEO Marian Goodell, a preface by writer Will Chase, an afterword by artist Leo Villareal, along with a special tribute to Burning Man’s late founder Larry Harvey by Stuart Mangrum.

All but a handful of the photos in the new edition are mine. The book also includes a number of images by fellow photographer Sidney Erthal who worked with us on the first two editions. He bowed out of the project this time around but we retained a few of his photos from the previous editions.

In June 2024, Burning Man: Art on Fire won two gold medals in the Foreword Independent Book Awards. It was chosen among ten finalists for Best Regional Book and another ten finalists for Best Coffee Table Book of the Year.

Art on Fire has done surprisingly well for a book that publishers were not interested in a decade ago. After we sent out the initial proposals, they were more or less unanimous in saying thanks, but no thanks. There were already too many books about Burning Man on the market, we were told. And besides, Burning Man was a “fringe” event with little more than a “niche readership.” We had nearly given up on the project when an editor at Quarto reached out to us expressing interest.

It took us a year and a half to get the first edition into print. When it came out, the book garnered reviews in a number of leading newspapers and magazines. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a cover story in its Sunday Style section, Tatler magazine gave it a glowing write-up, and Rolling Stone called it “one of the best books about Burning Man.”

Art on Fire went through several printings and was subsequently published in a revised second edition with a new cover. In 2017, it appeared in a beautiful Japanese edition. The book also spawned several museum shows and gallery exhibitions about the art of Burning Man. It even inspired a full-length documentary film by the same name, “Burning Man: Art on Fire,” released in the summer of 2020.

It’s now been several years since the last edition came out. Given how rapidly Burning Man has evolved in recent years the book has been overdue for a major update. For this edition, we completely revised and updated the text, adding several new sections, artist interviews, and a valuable epilogue that speaks to the growing importance of Burning Man art beyond the annual event in the Black Rock Desert.

We also replaced more than half of the 250-plus full-color photographs in the book. The new edition has been expanded to nearly 300 pages. It’s a hefty volume weighing in at almost 4 pounds.

This has been a collaborative project from the start and I’m immensely grateful to all the wonderful artists who worked with us to make this edition possible. The same can be said for all the Burning Man staff and volunteers who helped us at every step of the way. And to Jeff and the team at Quarto for their support and encouragement. Very special thanks to Marian, Will, Stuart and Leo for their invaluable contributions.

If you’re curious about the image on the cover, that’s scrap artist Duane Flatmo and his iconic mutant vehicle, “El Pulpo Magnifico,” in a photo from Burning Man 2022.

For more information about the book,
please see Quarto’s product page here,
or visit one of the following booksellers…

Amazon Barnes & Noble Books-a-Million Bookshop.org