In her previous artistic endeavors, photographer Marina Benković mesmerized with a minimalist style of capturing timeless landscapes with clean lines that resemble film clips or sets for grandiose scenes yet to unfold. What makes her photographs particularly thrilling is the potential for stories to unfold in those captured places.
During this year’s Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert (Nevada, USA), Marina completed a full circle in her photographic expression. The barren landscapes now serve as a backdrop for striking and dreamlike scenes that were hard to envision previously. Rich hues of blue, gold, pink, and purple, especially during dawn and dusk, lend the photographs a specific softness that fuels the imagination, shaping atmospheric compositions.
This series shifts the focus from landscapes to fluid and surreal depictions of art installations and „Burners“ in unconventional attire, riding unusual means of transportation, appearing like mirages through the desert sands that hinder visual orientation and precision. These dreamlike photographs, often intentionally out of focus, perfectly align with the theme of utopian escapism at Burning Man—a festival that combines all of Marina’s great passions: art, desert, mountains, music, and like-minded adventurers who play on the thin line between chaos and order, fun and danger, self-expression and a strong sense of community.
