Barnumville

I’ve had Matt Hoyle‘s photography on the brain for a couple months now.  The majority of his stuff is hyper-realistic in style, so shiny as to make the subject seem to be out of a vintage illustration for the Saturday Evening Post. His “Barnumville” photos lack the gloss of his  other series, but the colourful subjects made me even more curious about the project.

In an interview about the series, Hoyle reveals that these portraits “were initially just a recording” of the performers, in preparation for a greater thematic project depicting his imaginary town of Barnumville, where sideshow performers live in their time off. I’ve always had a soft spot for the idea of circus performers, so the thought of a fictional sideshow community just about made me jump about in glee. I can completely see these people pictured below retiring to some small town in the Florida panhandle. Scandals abound, outrageous acts are pulled off, but at the end of the day the charming characters spout good ol’ fashioned horse sense, peppered by observations from their crazy experiences. Into stereotyping, moi? Never!

I think the big thing that strikes me about this collection is that it manages to tread a very careful line between strangeness and  and complete normalcy. When I saw the picture above, I gleefully prepared myself for a freak show, but as I scrolled through the shots, I found myself pleased by the fact that these people who are so often fetishized because of their careers are shown as normal people. Some of them, at least. Others are in clown makeup, or are human blockheads (shudder!) so can’t quite tread that line, but I like the contrast. Anyway, check out the shots below.

The Daring Young Girl on the Flying Trapeze

When I was little, one of my chief ambitions in life was to run off and join the circus, to then undergo apprenticeship with a series of stern but kindly circus folk and wind up demonstrating my skillz to the cheering multitudes while clad in a tastefully spangled unitard. Other aspirations included being a Boxcar Child, being Amelia Earhart, inventing a time machine and being a plucky heroine in one of Heinlein’s juveniles. Clearly my grasp on reality was spot-on.

Anyway, the height of coolness to me was to be one of the trapeze artist. I’m always so impressed by people who can get over fears of heights and gravity and play in the air. For that reason, I’m completely impressed by Elsa Birge. She’s a French trapeze artist/contortionist, who has worked in the circus for years, and who runs a school to teach others trapeze skills, often training them in her own living room. (How crazy/awesome is it to have a trapeze in your living room?! !!!)  Her parents sent her to circus school when she was small to get rid of her excess energy, and she hasn’t looked back since.

Photographs by Gerard Harten.

On top of being generally awesome by simple virtue of being a trapeze artist, she also performed with French Gypsy band La Caravane Passe in their show “Le Vrai Faux Mariage”, which is a concert/ stage show designed along the lines of a Gypsy wedding. The result is awesome music and a very cool show, which I’m dying to see. I’ve embedded a clip from the show below, and you should really check out their site if you’re into any of the gyspy music that has been making the rounds of late. I love it.