Afrika Burn
Once a year thousands of new-agers, hippies, trance-heads, ravers, pagans and other free spirits converge on the Karoo in the Cape Province of South Africa for the Burning Man of Africa.
Having been to the event in 2008, I decided to once again attend the 2009 event with a view to creating images with a slight difference.
Because the participants are often dressed so outlandishly I opted to shoot portraits and thus had to take lighting stands and a grey background.
The only problem was that the wind seemed to blow ALL day at the site, so the chance of rigging up a background that would remain in place was slim.
While trying to put the backdrop up in the wind, one of the ‘Burners’ suggested that I just put up the stands and leave the background as is.
What a brilliant idea! This then gave the images of the ‘Burners’ a totally different feel.
What happened was that the empty expanse of the Karoo became part of the image and was not excluded as would have happened had I shot the portraits against a simple grey background.
Thus by trial and error, and some inspiration from the subjects, a series of portraits of AfrikaBurn was created.
For more images in this series view ‘Portraits: Burning Man’ @ :www.kim.co.za
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