The Circus Book
I have been photographing circus culture, in the UK and abroad, since I was a teenager.
I always planned for this body of work to become a book, but I haven’t yet been able to draw a line under it.
I think I felt wary of publishing this project until it was ‘finished’.
A conversation with a close friend recently made me realise something about my relationship with circus — it will never be finished.
1. Portraits
In the last decade or so the main focus of my circus visits has been portrait sittings. I have photographed over 100 portraits in this mode, always asking my subjects to pose in full show costume and makeup, but often devoid of their stage persona.
For the large part the circus artists I have worked with are quiet, thoughtful individuals who value their time on stage, and the freedom it allows them to inhabit a more outgoing persona.
2. Reportage
Since the very beginning I’ve loved being backstage. The perfectly choreographed dance of sets and props moving in and out of the ring, the darkness and the hushed voices. There’s something very emotive about a cast and crew working together towards something so high energy, and something very intimate about the fact they do it twice a day, every day.
I’ve photographed too many shows to count now, and every backstage is different. Some are very serious, some very celebratory. Some feel like a family, other feel like a competition.
20 years photographing Circus
In high school I met Jack. Jack’s family owns the last remaining total Circus building in the UK, The Hippodrome Circus in Great Yarmouth. Jack quickly became one of my closest friends and a group of us spent our adolescent years backstage, some working as a part of the production, some just along for the ride.
At 16 when I first picked up a camera the Hippodrome was my immediate muse. I lacked the confidence to ask the artists for portraits, so I made still life observations of the buildings interior. Piles of discarded spinning plates and the dusty loft space above the sloped ceilings of the auditorium were among the photographs on the first roll of film I ever shot.
It’s been 20 years and, despite some breaks, I’ve always come back to photographing circuses. Around the UK, in the US and regularly at the famous circus festival in Monte Carlo. It’s rarely paid and in fact it’s often quite expensive. I photograph circuses simply because they feel like home, and because I’m compelled to. It may well be my life’s work.
