Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Years of a clown
BEHIND THE BIG TOP: 250 YEARS SINCE FIRST EVER CIRCUS
ROLL up, roll up... the greatest PHOTOSHOOT in town is here.
From escape artists to acrobats, clowns to gymnasts and fire-eaters to contortionists, photographer Peter Lavery has seen them all and snapped them all.
In a remarkable new book and exhibition, his work lifts the lid on life behind the Big Top.
It comes a timely 250 years after Philip Astley staged the first ever circus and hot on the heels of the cinema blockbuster The
Greatest Showman, starring Hugh Jackman as legendary circus king P. T. Barnum. Lavery’s fantastic photo files have been compiled over five decades. It all started when the miner’s son from Wakefield, West Yorks, saw Winships Minicircus performing at the Queen’s
Hall in Leeds. Peter, 69, said: “That’s where it started. I began to visit circuses, begging lifts and sleeping rough in travels that took me all over Britain.
“I bedded down in fields, under wild animal wagons and sometimes in them.
“Once, the most comfortable pallet I could find proved to be the straw of an empty lion’s cage. The richness and diversity of the lives of circus people fascinated me. I was struck by the disparity between the finery, the sequinned costumes, the plumes, the elaborate display and the backstage reality. I was enthralled by the sounds and smells, but I had no idea that, for the best part of five decades, the circus would capture and hold my imagination.”
Peter’s exhibition, Circus Work, is part of a nationwide celebration to mark the 250-year milestone (circus250.com).
It was in 1768, on wasteland near London’s Waterloo, that showman, entrepreneur and equestrian rider Philip Astley did something entirely new.
He put together a series of physical acts – jugglers, acrobats, clowns, strongmen and bareback riders – and drew out the very first circus ring. Astley had created a whole new art form – this was the world’s first circus. Peter, who has travelled the world on advertising
I’d beg lifts, slept rough and once even bedded down in a lion’s cage
PETER LAVERY CIRCUS SNAPPER FOR 50 YEARS
campaigns and magazine assignments, has stuck to British and Irish circuses because he loves how the glamour and grit live side by side.
Since 1968 he has travelled thousands of miles to capture the images and is still blown away by the entertainers’ ability to perform for hundreds of people before tucking up for the night in a caravan just yards away.
He added: “I just really love the theatre of it all. They don’t get to go home like other entertainers. They put on a wonderful act and then go back to their caravan.
“What other entertainer performs his act and sets his own stage while living a few steps away from his public? I was taking a picture of this mud-covered caravan recently when the owner of the circus came up and said he had loads of much better caravans. But that’s not the point. That’s not what it is about.”
Unlike the performers who are drawn to life on the road, Peter never had a desire to join the circus as a child. But he did end up living “like a vagabond” as he started following them to complete a photography project he started while he was at the Royal College of Art.
And Peter is happy to see a new wave of interest in the circus. He said: “I think it has got a bigger future than ever. There are lots of kids who want to join the circus these days. For a new wave of people it’s not as ungroovy as it was to be in the circus as it was 30 years ago.”
It’s clear Peter is still hooked. But then he would be. For, as one clown said to the other: “I love circuses... the excitement’s in tents!”
I love the theatre, all the sounds and the smells LAVERY ON LURE OF THE BIG TOP