WINDOWS ON HISTORY

Photographs Of The Circus

by Jennifer Lemmer Posey Tibbals Curator of Circus

From the safety of the studio to adventures on muddy lots across the country, photographers have been drawn to the extraordinary world of circus both as a subject and as an income stream. The changing relationships between professional photography and the circus are seen in the rich collections of the Circus Museum and Archives.

The advent of collodion dry plates and other advances made photography a more portable medium allowing photographers to venture beyond the studio. From the 1890s through the 1930s, Frederick W. Glasier armed himself with a King View camera and fragile glass plate negatives and made his way to the grounds of fairs and circuses. His powerful eye for intimate, behind the scenes moments, gave insight into the people of the circus. He was able to anticipate moments like that of aerialist Lillian Leitzel making final preparations for her act. The image-conscious Leitzel controlled her presentation through the tilted angle of her right knee and her powerful and direct gaze at the camera. Today, almost a century after his last photograph, 1,800 of Glasier’s glass plate negatives depicting circus, fair, and Wild West performers are a treasured part of the Circus collections.

As Glasier’s career was winding down, Edward J. Kelty was making his start as a society photographer, but he found himself drawn to the performers of the Coney Island sideshows and the traveling circus. In the early 1920s, Kelty began traveling to circus lots gathering groups in front of his large format camera. He would then process the negative in his truck, which was equipped as a mobile darkroom, and offer oversize prints, complete with title and date, to the show people. Unlike Glasier, Kelty maintained an emotional distance from the people of the circus, but he excelled at framing them in their own canvas-tented world. In his most ambitious large format photograph, he orchestrated the gathering of the entire cast and crew of the 1934 Ringling show, with more than 830 individuals arranged fifteen rows deep between the camera and their backdrop of the big top. Organized in seemingly hierarchical rows, the image records both the massive scale of the show and the social stratification of the large community. In this remarkable image, Kelty succeeded in freezing the very essence of the traveling circus—the moment when the multitude of varied individuals are joined into a single spectacle of the circus.

The examples given here are a small representation of the marvelous imagery included in the Circus Museum’s collections. Through these images, we find ourselves better able to analyze not only specific moments in circus history but also to give the circus community of today a powerful connection to its own history.

Now that school is out, be sure to check out our

Summer Family Programs

Bring the entire family to our fun (and free) programs this summer! Programs are free, but tickets are required. Advance reservation is encouraged. Tickets may be reserved online in advance or picked up in the Visitors Pavilion on the day of the program. Each ticket includes Museum admission for the rest of the day.

Attention Homeschool Families!

HOMESCHOOL THIRD THURSDAY

JUN 20 & JUL 18

3:00 – 5:00 PM

Docents answer questions as you explore the first floor of Ca' d’Zan. This a free program, but requires pre-registration. To learn more, visit ringling.org/homeschool