SPARKS — Located at the southern end of Pyramid Highway, the Sparks Heritage Museum is a fitting place to display art depicting the fashions of the Burning Man Art Festival, the which takes place each Labor Day at the far northern end of the highway in the Black Rock Desert.

An exhibit of photographs taken by Santa Cruz, Calif.-based photographer Geoffrey Nelson showcasing some of those fashions is on display at the museum through May 11. The exhibit is called “Tribe of Artists: Costumes and Culture at Burning Man.”

“People at Burning Man are dressing as they really want to express themselves. It’s who they really are,” Nelson said while sitting on a bench outside the museum Saturday afternoon. “The rest of the year they dress in costumes to conform to society.”

Nelson said he has been visiting the large, desolate desert for many years, before the festival moved there from the beaches of Northern California in 1990. The exhibit is based on an exhibit Nelson organized for the Nevada Museum of Art in 2007. Nelson said he took the photographs in a 10-by-10 tent he set up at Burning Man using just a few lights and no background, which he said represents the isolation of the area but also to have the focus of the images be on the people and to show the inward happiness and sense of peace they feel out on the “playa.”

If the clothing expresses the real people trapped inside, the people who attend Burning Man are real interesting. One of Nelson’s images is called “Kitty Boy,” in which a man is dressed in a combination of leopard print, leather and chains. In the image “Reno Housewives,” two women and two men are all dressed in matching bright pink wigs and dresses.

“Costumes came to Burning Man many years back when the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a San Francisco transvestite group posing as a nunnery, came to the traditional pre-burn cocktail party dressed in enough glitter and make-up to make even Liberace blush,” it is written in the exhibit’s program. “Something clicked in many of the onlooker’s minds and from then on costumes have been an integral part of Burning Man.”

A professional photographer for more than 30 years, Nelson started his own camp at Burning Man called “Mohammed’s Mini Martini and Erotica Camp.” He said the idea was taken from his childhood, in which he spent several years as a teen living in North Africa when his father worked for the embassy there. He wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a Bedouin lounge like something out of “1001 Arabian Nights,” complete with pillows but where martinis are served. It is in this camp where he creates his portable photo studio and in which the images on display were created.

A successful commercial photographer, Nelson said the Reno-Sparks area is a special place for burners as they make their pilgrimage to the desert.

“There’s a sense of camaraderie as they gather here together as the last stop before Black Rock City,” Nelson said.

The cities of Reno, Sparks and Fernley have come to embrace their status as the last outpost of civilization for the yearly festival’s 50,000 or so attendees. He said people here have come to appreciate Burning Man as not being about “just a bunch of hippies,” but doctors and lawyers or anyone with a creative streak.

“My camp is all computer software engineers,” he said. “They’re not in a creative field they do creative things out there (at Burning Man).”

Nelson teaches a photography class at Truckee Meadows Community College twice a week and was in Sparks this weekend for a kickoff event by the Friends of Black Rock/High Rock. The group had a booth outside Great Basin Brewing Co. promoting the start of its volunteer season. Executive director Matthew “Metric” Ebert said next weekend will be a clean-up at Soldier Meadows and also the group will begin the seasonal staffing of the visitor contact station in Gerlach. Friends of Black Rock works to educate desert-goers about how to protect the area’s ecology and about how to survive in the harsh environment.

“There are even veterans who go a lot and don’t know how much damage a vehicle can do,” he said. “For example, mice won’t cross Jeep tracks because hawks might get them which then disrupts the seed distribution.”

The group will be holding its 2010 Black Rock Rendezvous to educate people about the desert on May 27 and 28. For more information about the group’s activities, go to www.blackrockrendezvous.com or www.blackrockdesert.org.

The Sparks Heritage Museum is located at 814 Victorian Ave. and is open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Satuday and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Visit www.sparksmuseum.org or call 355-1144 for more information.