Larry Harvey (born
11. January 1948.) is the main co-founder of the
Burning Man festival, along with his friend Jerry James. What started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach soon became an annual event that over 4 years grew to more than 800 people. In 1990, in collaboration with the SF
Cacophony Society, the event moved to Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert, where it has grown precipitously from a 3 day, 80 persons "zone trip," to an 8 day festival with over 50,000 participants.