Two Homebodies, an RV, and Burning Man 2019
A first journey into Black Rock City—through dust, art, fire, silence, and the strange freedom of becoming anonymous among eighty thousand people.
I was a programmer who loved computers, avoided sunlight, disliked dirt, and had outdoor survival skills only slightly above zero. My wife was also a programmer: tidy, artistic, and about as prepared for wilderness as I was.
And somehow the two of us arrived in Black Rock City in an RV, without a camp or an organization to take care of us. We depended on each other, survived the week, and made it home. That still feels a little miraculous.
01 · The unlikely arrival
A wish that sounded slightly unreasonable
Burning Man was my wife’s idea. Years earlier she had seen photographs from the event and was pulled in by the art. Later, as people we knew began making the journey, the idea turned into a promise. My role was simple: help make it real.
By 2019, nearly eighty thousand people were building a temporary city in the Nevada desert. Any account of a place that large can only be one person touching one part of the elephant. This is the part we touched.
02 · What is Burning Man?
Not an escape from rules, but a release from identity
It was not a lawless zone, a survival camp, or a place where strangers were expected to rescue you. Everyone was supposed to arrive ready to sustain themselves. Modern life had not disappeared either: our RV still had a refrigerator, a stove, and a microwave.
What changed was identity. With no reliable phone signal and tens of thousands of strangers who knew nothing about you, the usual masks loosened. The city became a place to express yourself, encounter other people’s work, and reconsider how much of ordinary life you truly needed.
03 · Life on the playa
Dust in everything, washboard roads under every bicycle
We entered with the ambition of becoming the cleanest residents at Burning Man. At the gate, we were invited to lie in the dust and make a “snow angel.” We did not know it was optional. That ended the cleanest-residents plan almost immediately.
I wiped the RV floor every day and kept the windows closed, but the playa always found another way in. The ground was hard, cracked, and covered with fine powder. Heavy vehicles carved it into ridges, so every bicycle ride felt like crossing a washboard.
04 · A city made to disappear
Art by day, impossible machines by night
Across the open desert, installations appeared without the walls, tickets, or quiet voices of a museum. Some were monumental, some absurd, and some intimate. At night, the same landscape became a moving field of color, flame, music, and bicycles covered in light.
Mutant vehicles were the city’s roaming architecture. A painted car was not enough; a vehicle had to become something else entirely. Bears, insects, temples, ships, and creatures moved across the darkness, carrying their own lights and sound.
05 · The Man Burn
Fireworks, heat, and a meaning I still could not name
I never found a single answer for what the wooden figure was supposed to mean. On the second-to-last night, the crowd gathered anyway. Fireworks climbed around it, the structure caught, and the figure slowly disappeared inside the flames.
The burn was spectacle: bright, loud, collective, and almost overwhelming. The photographs move from the first sparks to the final frame collapsing into fire.
06 · The Temple Burn
The last fire was quiet
The 2019 Temple, Larry’s Memorial, stood at the far edge of the playa. Its walls held grief, photographs, notes, names, and things people could not carry forever. On the final night, it was set alight.
There was no cheering. People sat in silence or cried softly as the fire spread. From the front row, the wave of heat made my body want to retreat, while the volunteers nearer the flames stood perfectly still. After the structure fell, the crowd left slowly and quietly.
After the dust
The part that came home
“Burning Man gave us a place to express ourselves, look closely at what other people had made, and think about how little we might actually need.”
The city vanished, as it was designed to. What remained was not one explanation of Burning Man, but a collection of moments: the absurdity of trying to keep an RV clean, the scale of art without walls, the violence of the first fire, and the silence of the last.
The complete archive
85 photographs from Black Rock City
Browse the full set by place and moment. Select any photograph to open the high-resolution gallery, then use the arrow keys or on-screen controls to continue.
People & performances
This final group documents adult spaces, nudity, and performances at Burning Man. It is hidden by default.