Lifeworks: Flaunting it

Writing in Harper's magazine, Edward Hoagland recently recalled the experience of watching circus performers doing “things they shouldn't reasonably do, with no ostensible purpose but showing off.”1 With total confidence they would perform impossible feats that shocked and amazed, and the shameless flaunting of their physical disfigurements transformed them into figures of pure spectacle. Hoagland gawked without guilt at these almost inhuman figures who, in the same day, against all conceivable reason, “were said to have bought cough medicine, underpants, and other personal stuff in the local stores.” Thus, circus performers simultaneously participated in the mundane world and in total fantasy. In Step Right This Way, the first museum exhibition of Edward J. Kelty's photographs of travelling circus performers (presented at the International Center of Photography in New York from Sept. 13 to Dec. 1, 2002), we witness images that both praise the performers for their audacity and strip away a little of their mystery. The 46 photographs that were included in this show are a mere handful of the circus photos found in Kelty's apartment after his death in 1967. Kelty was never a hugely successful photographer. He had a commercial studio in Manhattan in the 1920s and 30s. What made him unique was his use of a large-format banquet camera and his interest in photographing circus people. During the summer, in a truck that he had outfitted with a darkroom and sleeping area, he would follow small circuses as they criss-crossed the country. With his enormous camera, he was able to produce negatives up to 12” х 20” — ideal for registering the minute detail necessary for images in which he arranged groups of up to a thousand people. By the time the 1940s rolled around many of these small circuses began to disappear, and Kelty moved to Chicago, where he abandoned photography altogether. The discovery of these photos does more than provide a document of the mysterious lost world of the travelling circus. Kelty's photographs were clearly a labour of love. They demonstrate a sensitivity and fondness for the unconventional way of life of circus performers. These circuses were built on the showmanship of the bizarre. The more unusual the feat or physical deformity, the more awe-inspiring and enticing the spectacle. Along with daredevils, dwarfs and giants were other side-show attractions, such as “The Alligator Man,” who suffered from ichthyosis, a disfiguring affliction of the skin. While many other photographers at the time exploited people with rare conditions for personal gain, Kelty demonstrated respect for his subjects. His photographs are of people who convey not only acceptance of their physical abnormalities but a kind of pride, an open flaunting, that might be almost incomprehensible to others. In two separate photos entitled Congress of Freaks, Kelty arranged large numbers of circus performers in rows, each clearly visible and showcasing their unique features in full costume: the hirsute or morbidly obese lady, the contortionist, the albino, the dwarf. These photographs go beyond accepting the bizarre as normal; translating physical oddity into spectacle, they exalt it. With his respectful gaze Kelty was sometimes able to pull his subjects from their fantastical existence and return them to a more understandable world. His large arrangements of circus workers — standing in rows, shortest in front to tallest in back, smiling broadly — are reminiscent of family reunions, wedding parties and school photos. These are poses we have all held at one time or another. On the other hand, other photographs accentuate the extraordinary by eliminating the possibility of forgery or hoax. One photograph shows the x-ray image of a sword-swallower, the handle of the sword hovering above the skull, the blade penetrating deeply through the mouth and throat, and well into the chest. This is a remarkable authentication. It is almost easier to denounce the performer as inhuman than to attempt to believe that any of us might be capable of such a feat. In front of a world where complying with uniformity was expected, circus performers flaunted their uniqueness. In front of audiences that stared with a combination of envy and disapproval, they banded together to create moments of wonder. These visions may have disappeared, but Kelty's images renew our belief in a lost world of the imagination. Jonah Samson Family Medicine Resident St. Michael's Hospital Toronto, Ont.

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