Giuliano Plorutti: Circus

Italian photographer Giuliano Plorutti’s Circus sets aside the familiar sights of the show ring in order to portray the everyday life of circus performers; he is, as it were, more interested in the afternoon’s practice than the evening’s performance. He also favors the humbler circus groups to the large-scale companies, those that offer simple combinations of music, theater and dance. These unobtrusive black-and-white photographs depict performers of all kinds—jugglers, musicians, snake charmers, trapeze artists, tightrope walkers, clowns—posing informally for the camera, in the midst of limbering up in private or in the ring, playing music together or alone, relaxing in their caravans with their families or in more straightforward portraits facing the camera. The pictures were taken mostly from 2000 to 2009 (with a few pictures taken in the early 1990s) in Italy, France, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and vividly convey the realities of a nomadic lifestyle.