Every year, participants in the Burning Man Festival descend on the playa of Nevada's Black Rock Desert to form a temporary city – a self-reliant community populated by performers, artists, free spirits, and more. Last week, an estimated 68,000 people came to Burning Man 2013 from all over the world to dance, express themselves, and take in the spectacle. Gathered below are some of the sights from the festival, which lasted a week and came to its conclusion yesterday

“A Hadaka Matsuri (“Naked Festival”) is a type of Japanese festival, or matsuri, in which participants wear a minimum amount of clothing; usually just a Japanese loincloth (called fundoshi), sometimes with a short happi coat, and rarely completely naked. Whatever the clothing, it is considered to be above vulgar, or everyday, undergarments, and on the level of holy Japanese shrine attire. Naked festivals are held in dozens of places throughout Japan every year, usually in the summer or winter. The most famous festival is held in Okayama, where the festival originated. Every year, over 9,000 men participate in this festival”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Japanese men wear loincloths as they splash about in freezing cold water during Saidaiji Naked Festival, at Saidaiji Temple on February 18, 2012 in Okayama, Japan. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)

A cat and a dog stray along a side street in Las Pinas city, Metro Manila, Philippines, 02 July 2023. A significant number of dogs and cats left wandering in streets could lead to potential health hazard due to rabies. Amidst Covid-19 pandemic, displaced pet owners who lost their job because their employers closed or lost business were forced to leave their animals in the city as they migrate elsewhere. (Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA)

A dead green sea turtle is collected from the beach at the Khor Kalba Conservation Reserve, in the city of Kalba, on the east coast of the United Arab Emirates, Tuesday, February 1, 2022. A staggering 75% of all dead green turtles and 57% of all loggerhead turtles in Sharjah had eaten marine debris, including plastic bags, bottle caps, rope and fishing nets, a new study published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. The study seeks to document the damage and danger of the throwaway plastic that has surged in use around the world and in the UAE, along with other marine debris. (Photo by Kamran Jebreili/AP Photo)

Nyaueth by Peter Zelewski – £2,000 third prize winner. This was taken near London’s Oxford Street as part of Zelewski’s series Beautiful Strangers. Zelewski explains: ‘The aim of Beautiful Strangers is to challenge the concept of traditional beauty with a series of spontaneous street portraits of everyday citizens who show character, uniqueness and a special inner quality’. (Photo by Peter Zelewski/Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2015)

A Shariah law official whips a woman who is convicted of prostitution during a public caning outside a mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Friday, April 20, 2018. Indonesia's deeply conservative Aceh province on Friday caned several unmarried couples for showing affection in public and two women for prostitution before an enthusiastic audience of hundreds. The canings were possibly the last to be carried out before large crowds in Aceh after the province's governor announced earlier this month that the punishments would be moved indoors. (Photo by Heri Juanda/AP Photo)

For more than three years, Ukraine has been plagued by a conflict between the eastern secessionist territories and the Kiev government. Demonstrations by pro-Russian parties that oppose the current government first began in 2014 - and now, over 10,000 people have died, many of them civilians. These images portray a generation caught between war and peace. Many of them were born into the civil conflict dominating the country and are disorientated about their place in the world. Here: Youths during a party organised on a decommissioned bridge in Kiev. (Photo by Aude Osnowycz/The Guardian)