Giving a Second Life to Burning Man’s Artworks

Eclectic, monumental art installations blanket the desolate landscape of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert as music lovers and artists attending Burning Man, whose style mimics the Mad Max films, dance into the night. At the forefront of capturing the art installations before some of them meet their demise is musician, writer, and photographer Dan Bradner, who brilliantly shoots immense exhibits before they are taken down or set ablaze at the end of the festival.

Bradner, who assists in setting up and taking down the stages in Center Camp’s main structure, Oculus, is a commercial portrait photographer in Montana whose focus is artists, especially musicians and bands.

As artists haul their work to the site of what will be a small city that takes itself down to start afresh each year, leaving no crumbs behind, participants rely on photographers, such as Bradner, to frame art that may no longer exist outside of that desert, giving it a chance for a second viewing, or second life.