Arash Afshar is an Iranian-American documentary photographer, writer, and cultural architect.
As a documentary photographer, he has spent over two decades moving between worlds that rarely speak to each other — government institutions and underground music scenes, civic life and counterculture, the mainstream and the margins. That tension informs his storytelling, his perspective, and his aesthetic in equal measure.
He discovered the Burner community through YOUtopia, San Diego's regional burn. Like most newly minted Burners, his first instinct was to give something back. That instinct became Burner Podcast — founded in 2013, now the longest-running traditional format audio podcast in the global Burning Man community.
Arash got his start in podcasts as the co-host of Crappy Awesome, for which he served as co-host 2006–2017. One of the earliest shows in the independent hip hop scene and a pillar of underground hip hop in Southern California, Crappy Awesome Podcast was a place where hip hop artists were having honest conversations about DMT and mental health long before it become fashionable. He was known in that world as Mister Arash, which carried over as how he introduces himself now on Burner Podcast.
He envisioned Burner Podcast for a specific listener: a Burner couple somewhere in a small town, far from the vibrant and vast community he has such easy access to in San Diego. The show exists so that this weirdo Burner couple can feel connected to the global community without having to wait for their one week a year at Burning Man. The perfect episode feels like a 3am conversation at some random bar on some dark backstreet deep in Black Rock City.
Reality is a conversation. And the conversation must continue.
arashafshar.com
yesterdayiwasclever.com
instagram.com/mrarash
As a documentary photographer, he has spent over two decades moving between worlds that rarely speak to each other — government institutions and underground music scenes, civic life and counterculture, the mainstream and the margins. That tension informs his storytelling, his perspective, and his aesthetic in equal measure.
He discovered the Burner community through YOUtopia, San Diego's regional burn. Like most newly minted Burners, his first instinct was to give something back. That instinct became Burner Podcast — founded in 2013, now the longest-running traditional format audio podcast in the global Burning Man community.
Arash got his start in podcasts as the co-host of Crappy Awesome, for which he served as co-host 2006–2017. One of the earliest shows in the independent hip hop scene and a pillar of underground hip hop in Southern California, Crappy Awesome Podcast was a place where hip hop artists were having honest conversations about DMT and mental health long before it become fashionable. He was known in that world as Mister Arash, which carried over as how he introduces himself now on Burner Podcast.
He envisioned Burner Podcast for a specific listener: a Burner couple somewhere in a small town, far from the vibrant and vast community he has such easy access to in San Diego. The show exists so that this weirdo Burner couple can feel connected to the global community without having to wait for their one week a year at Burning Man. The perfect episode feels like a 3am conversation at some random bar on some dark backstreet deep in Black Rock City.
Reality is a conversation. And the conversation must continue.
arashafshar.com
yesterdayiwasclever.com
instagram.com/mrarash
