For more than 70,000 people, the end of summer means the start of Burning Man. The annual festival, which began in 1986, takes place in Black Rock City, an impressive temporary city in the Nevada desert, erected specially for the event.
As the 2017 festival winds down, photos of the spectacularly colorful event have cropped up all over Instagram. And if there’s one thing we’ve come to expect from Burning Man, it’s a healthy dose of wild costumes and incredible art installations. After last year’s Da Vinci’s Workshop theme, the 2017 focus is Radical Ritual. Given the festival’s radical roots, it’s the perfect theme to pay homage to Burning Man’s past, while making way for new ideas.
“Beyond the dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical ideas of religion, there is immediate experience. It is from this primal world that living faith arises,” Burning Man’s website declares. “In 2017, we will invite participants to create interactive rites, ritual processions, elaborate images, shrines, icons, temples, and visions.” And it appears that, as always, participants let their wild sides out, posing on—or in front of—the different installation that dot the desert.
We scoured Instagram to find the best photos to embody the spirit and soul of Burning Man 2017. From eccentric costumes to elaborate art, there’s no doubt that, once again, Black Rock City is the place to be as August gives way to September.