Photography – Boulder
The diesel engine of the pick-up truck gurgles slowly down the single lane road into the Black Rock desert of Nevada. I\'m heading into the fading sunlight downwind 10 years from the first time I ever stumbled through the dust-covered entrance of the annual Burning Man festival. Peering through the cracked rear view mirror of my mind‚ I think of my story-what has made me Andrew Wyatt.
I relived the moment my brain first eggshell-cracked and splattered over all my previously held beliefs about the universe onto the alkali desert floor.
It all started in the summer of 2002, for me, a Southern Baptist preacher who threw little more than a cheap camera, a Jesus costume, and a pyramid of canned chili into the back of a 1983 Volvo station wagon that chugged its way into the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada. There I was thrown into America’s most eclectic, provocative, and combustible arts festival called Burning Man.
Since emerging from that head splitting experience, I began a journey out of Christian ministry into a career of festival and news photojournalism. I have contributed to a number of music festivals and newspapers including the L.A. Times and USA Today. I traded in the church pulpit for a camera and my, now trademark, sequin Santa suit documenting music and arts festival around the country. I may have lost his religion, but found my soul.