Built to be let go.

David Best is an American sculptor best known for the soaring temple structures he builds each year at Burning Man in Nevada, made from recycled wood and the labour of hundreds of volunteers. His temples exist to be filled with grief and let go of — visitors leave messages, mementos and memories inside before the whole structure is ceremonially burned.

Derry~Londonderry has its own long history with bonfires, entangled for decades with the city’s divisions during the Troubles. Artichoke brought David and his crew to build a temple with the local community instead — a shared structure, unaffiliated with any side, built specifically to be released rather than defended.

Over the seven days it was open, close to 60,000 people visited, covering its central pillar and interior with personal messages. On 21 March 2015 the finished structure — 72 feet high — was ceremonially set alight by eight people from across the city’s communities, watched by a further 15,000. As the critic Phineas Harper wrote afterwards in the Architectural Review, the finished temple stood less for any single faith than for human endurance itself.

I was Temple’s official photographer throughout the build and the burn.