Some 70,000 people from all over the world are gathering at Nevada's remote Black Rock Desert, about 177km north of Reno, in the United States.

They do so, some of them every year, braving the all-pervasive desert dust and dust storms whipped up by winds of up to 48kmh, to attend Burning Man 2015.

The sold-out counterculture festival, this year themed "Carnival of Mirrors", is a week-long annual event which allows participants to experience art, music and the unique community that develops there.

Participants join in the effort to co-create Black Rock City which, as its website proclaims, is a "temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance".

Burning Man begins on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September - this year on Sept 7 - which coincides with the American Labour Day holiday. By midweek, as seen in the photo above dated Sept 2, the temporary city had taken form, even as more continue to arrive.

The festival, named for the burning of a giant wooden effigy that marks its climax, began at San Francisco's Baker Beach in 1986 and migrated to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada in the 1990s.