SHOCKING photographs have captured the moment a man dodged security to run into the white hot flames of a towering effigy at the Burning Man festival in Nevada.

Pershing County Sheriff Jerry Allen identified the man as Aaron Joel Mitchell, 41, who died Sunday morning at the UC Davis hospital burn centre in California.

Allen said the man ran through two layers of security officers at about 10:30pm Saturday local time during the Man Burn event at the counterculture festival.

The sheriff said Mitchell was rescued by firefighters and then airlifted to the hospital.

Allen said doctors confirmed Mitchell wasn’t under the influence of alcohol but that a toxicology report is pending as part of the investigation.

About 70,000 people are attending the Burning Man art and music celebration in the Black Rock Desert, about 161 kilometres north of Reno, Nevada.

The nine-day festival culminates with the burning of a towering 40-foot effigy made of wood, a symbol of rebirth, which usually happens the Saturday before the Labor Day holiday. It’s followed by the burning of a temple on Sunday. This year’s festival ends on Monday.

Attendees have tried before to run into the flames while the man is burning and there have been reported injuries from people trying to get a piece of the spectacle as a token and going through the hot coals.

Allen said it’s a problem that the organisers have tried to contain by having their own rangers stage a human-chain to prevent people from accessing the fire.

Allen said this is the first time someone has gotten through like this and the only fatality that he’s aware of in his 15 years with the county.

“People try to run into the fire as part of their spiritual portion of Burning Man,” Allen said. “The significance of the man burning, it’s just kind of a rebirth, they burn the man to the ground, a new chapter has started, it’s part of their tenants of radical self-expression.”

A Burning Man spokesman didn’t immediately respond when asked for comment.

The harrowing incident is not the first time someone has attempted to reach flames in similar circumstances and died.

In 2014, Christopher Wallace ran into an inferno at the Element 11 festival in Utah — a spin-off of the Burning Man event.

The effigy burned for around 10 minutes before Wallace ran towards the structure chased by security guards.

Following Wallace’s death, authorities established that the 30-year-old had intended to take his own life and had told other festival-goers of his plans.