Burning Man

Burning Man Project is the nonprofit that brings more joy, awe, and connection to the world.

A chronological documentary of 4,221 moments spanning 1986–2025 on Loreline.

Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20

Eras

Burning culture, The event explaining itself. Larry Harvey on how it started, the Cacophony Society and Baker Beach, the ten principles, gifting and decommodification, and the arguments about what the thing is for.
Moments, The photographic record. Tens of thousands of frames from 1990 onward, the people, the costumes, the dust, the art and the quiet parts between the spectacle.
Aftermovies, The year edited down. Recap films and personal edits from 1999 onward, the footage people cut when they got home and the dust out of their gear.
Burn, The night the Man goes up. The burn from 1995 onward, the circle around it, the fire conclave, the collapse and the crowd surging in afterwards, plus the Temple burn that follows and is nothing like it.
Art, What gets built out there and mostly destroyed. The large-scale installations, the mutant vehicles and art cars, the fire art, the sculptures lit from inside, and the pieces that took a year to make and one night to lose.
Burner POV, The playa filmed by the people crossing it. Bike rides out to deep playa and back, camp walk-throughs, dust storms hit head on, and the handheld footage that shows what a week there actually looks like from inside.
News coverage, How the outside world reported it. Broadcast segments from CBC, Arte and the networks, the early curiosity pieces, and the coverage that arrived once the attendance figures did.
Performances, Music and staged work on the playa. Bands playing the open desert, sound camps, theatre and circus acts, the Mermen in 1995 and everything since.
Bird's eye, Black Rock City from above. Drone and helicopter footage of the arc of streets, the Man at the centre, and a city of eighty thousand that exists for one week a year.
Documentaries, Longer films about the event. Feature documentaries, festival cuts and the sustained pieces that follow a camp or an artist through a build.
Timelapse, Time compressed. Temple and Man builds shot frame by frame, the city assembling and vanishing, and the light moving across the playa.
Theme camps, The camps themselves. The bars, the games, the sound systems and the elaborate one-joke installations that people haul out and set up every year.

1986-06-22 - 049 - Burning Man, 1986. The first Burning Man was 8' tall and he was burned on a beach in San Francisco during the summer solstice of 1986.\n\n~Photo by Jerry James Photographed by Michael Mikel, a Burning Man co-founder, from his historic archive of the event. Contributed by the Burning Man historian; used with permission.
1986-06-22 - IMG_3960. A photograph from Burning Man, 22 June 1986. Uploaded as IMG_3960. No caption was recorded with the upload.
1986-06-22 - BM+86
1986-06-22 - Burning Man 1986 at Baker Beach. Videos from the first Burning Man gathering on the day of the summer solstice. At Baker Beach in San Francisco.
1987-06-01 - 1987 Beach Burn Flier with image of 1986 Burn
1987-06-01 - Burning Man, 1987. The second year of Burning Man on Baker Beach.\n\n~Photo by Stewart Harvey. Photographed by Michael Mikel, a Burning Man co-founder, from his historic archive of the event. Contributed by the Burning Man historian; used with permission.
1987-06-20 - 87_man
1988-06-01 - 88_manposter. Possibly the first documented item where event is named Burning Man. This poster was used to announce event on Baker Beach. Similar to 1987 Flyer, this poster uses a quote from the poem "The Forces That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" by Dylan Thomas. Photo Edward Ingraham
1988-06-18 - Burning Man 1988:: Baker Beach, San Francisco. From the Burning Man Archives. 1988. The 3rd Burning Man ever had 200 people on Baker Beach celebrating the Summer Solstice. It was the first year the figure was named the "Burning Man". By 1988 organizers were committing to it fully, building a Man nearly forty feet, and striving to attract an audience beyond their immediate friends. For a deeper look at the history of Burning Man check out the Burning Man Timeline: http://burningman.org/timeline Check out our full video archive: http://youtube.com/burningman Visit the Burning Man website: http://burningman.org Read the Voice of Burning Man blog: http://burningman.org/voices Burning Man on Twitter: http://twitter.com/burningman LIKE Burning Man on Facebook: http://fb.com/burningman Follow us on Instagram: http://instagram.com/burningman Subscribe to the Jackrabbit Speaks newsletter: http://burningman.org/jrs
1988-06-18 - 88_man2. "The Man was presoaked with kerosene, his legs and body stuffed with newspaper and wrapper with burlap skin, also all soaked with kerosene. It was another blustery cold evening, and he was on fire and the burlap and newspapers blew away in ashes, but the Man, through charred, was still standing. That's when the Man had his first encounter with the Man, Jerry recalls... Larry and I decided to talk to the cops, and after a short negotiation, they agreed to allow us to knock down the Man and finish burning it. We sawed him in half in a few places, threw him in a pile, and finished burning it. "It was obviously an extraordinary thing for the cops. They sure didn't come across that every day. They probably feared we'd start slaughtering goats there on Baker Beach."
1989-06-01 - 89_roughdraft. The June 1989 Cacophony canon, Rough Draft invites you to call for information on the burning of a four story tall wooden man.
1989-06-24 - 89_burn
1989-06-24 - 3834159_orig. Part of the Man arrives on Baker Beach. Photo: Stewart Harvey
1989-06-24 - Burning Man 1989 at Baker Beach
1989-06-24 - 889752. A photograph from Burning Man, 24 June 1989. Uploaded as 889752. No caption was recorded with the upload.
1989-10-17 - 504_bricks. On October 17, 1989 at 5:04 PM, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area and a brick wall collapsed on the rear half of an Olds Cutlass parked by Clayton and Page streets. Michael Mikel saw it there and the creative wheels began to turn. “I bet that will still run”, he mused, and he placed a note on the car offering to buy it.
1990-06-01 - Burning Man, 1990. The Mans torso being carried down to Baker Beach in San Francisco, 1990. Photographed by Michael Mikel, a Burning Man co-founder, from his historic archive of the event. Contributed by the Burning Man historian; used with permission.
1990-06-21 - 2b029 - Baker Beach, 1990. Surrounded by scores of spectators yelling "BURN THE MAN!", Jerry James (L) & Larry Harvey (R) have a serious discussion about the police edict to forbid the burn at Baker Beach on the night of 21 June 1990. Several hours later, the unburned Man was lowered, disassembled and then taken to the Black Rock Desert two months later. Larry Harvey photographed by Michael Mikel. From the co-founder's own archive. Contributed by the Burning Man historian; used with permission.
1990-06-30 - BurningMan1990 Shut Down By the Man. This was the 5th or 6th Burning Man, and possibly the last one attempted at Baker Beach in San Francisco. Law enforcement insisted on seeing a permit for the event, and organizers agreed to postpone the burn. He was lowered down, disassembled and hauled out. The small gathering continued the evening around a smaller bonfire. I think the Man was soon invited by the Cacophony Society to a separate event at Black Rock Desert, NV. I shot this way back then and hadn't bothered to digitize the vintage SD footage until now. Not the most exciting Burning Man event, but maybe you'll see your good looking 1990 selves in here somewhere.
1990-07-09 - The 1st Burning Man. The Burning Man of today evolved originally from an annual art party hosted by Mary Grauberger. Taking place on or around the summer solstice on San Francisco's Baker Beach prior to 1986, the art parties had sculpture burning as a central theme. Then in 1986 Larry Harvey, inspired in part by Mary Grauberger's events, asked his friend Jerry James to help him build an 8' effigy to be burned on Baker beach. This event, unnamed at this point, continued annually until 1990 when, the effigy having grown to 40', the police pulled the plug on the parties climactic burn. Meanwhile, Kevin Evans and John Law, of the Cacophony Society, were planning a similar event called Zone Trip #4 - A Bad Day at Black Rock in Nevada's Black Rock Dessert. Harvey and friends, having nowhere to burn the 40' effigy, joined forces with the Zone Trip #4 group and this was the birth of what we now know as Burning Man. The following clip contains footage of an earlier burn at Baker Beach and also the first burn to take place on the Playa.
1990-08-01 - 2b030 - Burning Man, 1990. L to R standing: Larry Harvey, Rob Schmitt & Louis Brill.\nseated: Janet Lohr, Kevin Evans, unknown (with red scarf), Bob Gridley (bald head) Larry Harvey photographed by Michael Mikel. From the co-founder's own archive. Contributed by the Burning Man historian; used with permission.
1990-09-01 - 1990_flyer. Flyer for Burning Man 1990.
1990-09-01 - 2a226 - Burning Man, 1990 - Arrival. Crossing The Line ceremony is a ritual that began with the Cacophony Society Zone Trips. The term Zone was taken from a couple of references which refer to the disorientation with a new environment; 'Gravity's Rainbow', a 1973 novel written by Thomas Pynchon, and also the 1979 science fiction movie 'Stalker' by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The Zone is a mysterious place where reality shifts Photographed by Michael Mikel, a Burning Man co-founder, from his historic archive of the event. Contributed by the Burning Man historian; used with permission.
1990-09-02 - 90_roughdraftoffici1171vari_0097. The move to the Black Rock Desert represented an epochal change. Survival camping was a challenge. In a very real sense, everyone perforce was a participant. A pilgrimage was now required to reach the home of Burning Man, and he resided in a consecrated space, a place apart and separate from the ordinary world. The desert had enlarged the scope of human struggle and intensified involvement. It had restored the spirit of Burning Man and the community that had grown around it. Most importantly, beneath its sentinel presence, a city had begun to form.
1990-09-03 - 2a223 - Burning Man, 1990. The first Man stood on the ground. We raised him by pulling on a rope attached to his navel. Everyone participated:\n<a href=\ Photographed by Michael Mikel, a Burning Man co-founder, from his historic archive of the event. Contributed by the Burning Man historian; used with permission.
1990-09-29 - Rough+Draft+-BM+Planning+Party
1990-09-29 - Instructions+for+first+BRC+Burn
1990-09-29 - MV5BYmYzNDcyNmEtNGJhMS00M2Y2LTgxYTEtMzM3NjljNDEyOGFjXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjc1NTYyMjg@._V1_
1990-09-29 - Original+Zone+Trip+#4+t-shirt+ad+(Seb+Hyde)
1990-09-29 - bad_day_at_black_rock-Tshirt. The first Burning Man shirt
1990-09-30 - burning-man-1990_3495905018_o.webp
1990-09-30 - burning-man-1990_3495903926_o.webp
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (9 of 19)
1990-09-30 - burning-man-1990_3495904904_o.webp
1990-09-30 - burning-man-1990_3495903778_o.webp
1990-09-30 - zone trip 1990, Burning Man in the desert.. The San Francisco Cacophony Society zone trip #4, 1990
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (1 of 19)
1990-09-30 - 1990+The+Line
1990-09-30 - Burningman 1990. My friend Bob G. did this from Super 8 film he shot at the first desert burn. I don't think he's ever put it online in any form, so here it is with his edit and soundtrack. He's in another desert on nearly the exact opposite side of the planet (though still in the northern hemisphere) these days. So here it is, Burningman with one portapotty. Hi Mr. G!
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (12 of 19)
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (2 of 19)
1990-09-30 - Screen+Shot+2019-02-25+at+2.13.29+PM
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (4 of 19)
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (5 of 19)
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (6 of 19)
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (7 of 19)
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (14 of 19)
1990-09-30 - 1990_kevin. Kevin Evans on the way to Burning Man 1990.
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (15 of 19)
1990-09-30 - kevins-burning-man-photos_3482187912_o (16 of 19)

…and 4,171 more moments.

Full text archive: /loreline-text/burning-man.md

BURNING MAN

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