FORWORD by Bruce Bernard
Peter Lavery's photographs of the circus could at first and above all seem to be a pure sensuous pleasure, even more than they are such certainly truthful documents of their subject. But then they very soon reveal themselves to be lively and faithful portraits of the human beings involved, naturally communicating their unique combination of the earthy, tough and familiar with the exotic, dangerous, and absurd.

So the pictures in this book are primarily a pleasure to look at, while simple enjoyment is rapidly supplemented by their acute perception of their human subjects, with the strange and often heroic roles that they have either chosen for themselves or which have come to them by chance and very often by inheritance.

Lavery began taking these photographs twenty-five years ago as a student project, but his level of feeling has remained so consistent that it is difficult to determine their chronological order unless the props or clothes (very rarely) give it away. This is surely because the spirit in which he embarked on the project was both the right and natural one for him, though this has not precluded an imaginative variety of approach within its firm consistency. For me, what is important is that he has not made any attempt to invoke a forced nostalgia or feeling of mourning for a form of entertainment which has been declining in its popularity and mythic significance for several decades. That approach, though it could be justified to a degree, would not have done full justice to the resilience of his subjects, who seem determined to remain as sanguine as possible and exercise their various and often extremely exacting skills for as long as people will pay them to do so. No photographer has ever looked at circus performers in this way before, or brought us closer to them as individual human beings. These pictures, I believe, show Lavery to be a photographer of the first rank in his human and pictorial perception, and his undoubted technical skill. They demythologise the circus without robbing it in any way of its curious beauty, magnetism, and poignancy.

Lavery has written briefly on his attitude to portrait photography, which Circus Work overwhelmingly is, as well as his heroes among his predecessors. He divides them into those who have used only the minimum coaxing of their sitters and allowed them as large a part as possible in the realisation of their true likenesses, and those who manipulate the the sitter, not only with persuasive pressure, but also with lighting, background, and tricks of printing to make the pictures themselves more important than the simple personal truth that the subjects have to offer. Above all others Lavery admires August Sander (1876-1964) the chronicler of early 20th century German humanity, who as far as possible allowed his subjects to fashion their own images – something that Nazi "idealists" took considerable exception to. Further back in history Lavery much admires the great Nadar (a balloonist perhaps, but definitely not a circus performer) and Edward Curtis, who so immaculately chronicled the North American Indian just before their final expulsion from our world. Nearer to our own time, Lavery much admires the recently discovered Peruvian, Martin Chambi, the town photographer of Cuzco and an American, the oddball Mike Disfarmer, who seems simply to have asked the people of his village in Arkansas to sit or stand in his very plain studio and be themselves. Lavery has absolutely no wish to emulate Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz or Richard Avedon, among many other self-conscious artists, but he admires Paul Strand, Diane Arbus, and others who have moved both ways between pictorialism and his own artistically self-effacing credo. Lavery says he has no interest in "sentimental humanism" or in collecting "types" but wants to "extract a look both more intimate and revealing". So those who study his book a few times should feel, as I do, that they have really extended their range of worth-while human acquaintance.

Something must be said about the role of backgrounds in Lavery's portraits and his ingenuity and perception in their choice and variety. He seems intent on using them very judiciously, never overcrowding or stepping back that inch or foot too far which would cause the main subject suffer. He can make his backgrounds a brilliant enhancement of the figure, as on pages 34 & 35, where Caroline Gerbola's horse is shot in an Irish country lane that renders the scene extraordinary but absolutely right. The curve of Omar Robarti doing a handstand (page 28) is rhymed just perfectly enough with the tall tree behind him, while juggling clubs with a close friend across a rough track (pages 86 & 87) is a rustic pleasure one had never dreamed of. Finding a charred wooden frame for Sharon Micheletti, with exquisite wild plants as in a Flemish painting (page 16), was perhaps a piece of luck, but one which Lavery grasped with both hands. And then – just to show us – he produced a masterpiece where none of the figures' identities is clear. With the trapeze practice (pages 54 & 55) he has taken marvellous advantage of the presence of the grazing horse to underline the scene's incongruity, and released his shutter at a near perfect moment for the pattern of human figures. It must also be noted that though most of the subject matter is rendered still and sharp, there are several in which movement blur has a wonderfully enhancing effect.

Lavery's portraits of clowns have little to do with the sentiment of that understandably popular drama of thick greasepaint and tragic love, the opera Pagliacci, which is at least much more moving than the demeaning greetings-card images that have been painted of horribly soulful and unhappy clowns' faces. A cartoon in the New Yorker once had a good perception of the tragic clown when it depicted a doctor examining one lying prostrate by a circus ring and exclaiming "My God, man, your heart is breaking!". There is, of course, a most mel- ancholy aspect and sometimes an element of cruelty in the tradition of the circus clown, but Lavery shows them to be quite as good-humoured and hard-working performers as the rest. He is not one to hint at mysteries where he can neither see nor feel them and, though it would be possible to photograph the circus from a darker or more romantic viewpoint, Lavery has been faithful to what his own honest eye and sense of real life have told him it is like.

Much of the pleasure of these photographs, as in the circus itself, is provided by the female performers, whether they are the rather feebly entitled Blackpool "Circ-usettes" and other showgirls, who dance a little but are mainly there, in their sequins and feathers, for allure and decoration, or wether skilled performers on all levels, from the contortionist, equestrienne, and acrobat to those facing the perils of the high-wire and trapeze. The girl (page 81) who has just come down from the trapeze is ordinary enough, but her demeanour, together with her costume and its stains of fresh perspiration lend her an aura which commands our admiration and goodwill. Some of the many others are attractive by any standards, but the average seem like both good and fairly good-looking working girls – but ones who have, so to speak, sprouted wings. There are a few who seek to exude a sultrier kind of glamour, but they too are honest workers rather than just sirens. It seems possible that even to a lover of ballet, a girl turning somersaults high above the ring can, if only for a split second, be more exciting and beautiful than Margot Fonteyn, and the daring young woman is just a little more thrilling to most spectators of both sexes than the daring young man. Lavery seems to have an acute appreciation of each, and his portraits mostly bear witness to a marvellous lack of the kind of vanity and its related anxiety met with much more often in other branches of show business. We are offered several kinds of pleasure tin being introduced to them as gracefully as this photographer does.

The picture captions at the end of this book make it clear what a heterogeneous tribe circus people are, and perhaps – only perhaps of course – a good omen for a United Europe. Also, because the sexes are equal participants, how their profession naturally became so much of a family one, often continuing through several generations. There are Latins, Gauls, Russians, Magyars, Americans, Irish, Scots and also the English depicted in these pages – a highly disciplined set of vagabonds and surely with not too many rogues among them, as they depend for their survival on unity and order, as well as a general goodwill towards their public. It will be a bad day when they can no longer offer the world (particularly that of children) the vicarious pleasures of skill with no practical end in view and the thrills of purposeless danger voluntarily sought, all taking place in a sphere far removed from the insidious false security of supermarkets and junk T.V. – one where even policemen or tax-inspectors on their lawful paths of duty must sometimes feel like coarse and irrelevant intruders.

I think that this book, apart from the pure pleasure it provides by a master photographer, could stimulate people to seek out the circus and enjoy it again, sometimes long after they thought they had done so for the last time.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S NOTES
Early in 1971, I began begging lifts and sleeping rough in travels that took me all over Great Britain to visit circuses. I bedded down in fields and under wagons and sometimes even in them. On one occasion, the most comfortable pallet I could find proved to be in the straw of an empty lion¹s cage. Most of the time, however, the cages were occupied by lions.

I was then a student at the Royal College of Art, in London, and had been casting around for a worthwhile project. I carried with me in a backpack a 5 x 4 camera and only one lens. It did not take me long to discover that I had launched on an undertaking that made me want fervently to express my enchantment with the way I was becoming able to see things.

The richness and diversity of the lives of circus people held an immediate fascination for me. From acrobats to animal trainers, from clowns to trapeze artists, they were highly specialised performers, and yet they lived together in what felt to me like a seamless whole. Unlike the actor or musician, I quickly noted, the circus performer could not take the train back to his other life at the end of his day's work. Even now, a quarter of a century on, I still think that it is only the circus fraternity who any longer carries with him (or her), day in and day out, home and family, colleagues and workplace – his (or her) entire world. What other entertainer both performs his art and sets his own stage while at the same time living only steps away from the public arena?

As a child, it had never been my desire to run away and join a circus. My encounter with the big top was more or less accidental. On a visit home to Wakefield, I dropped in on a small indoor circus at the Queen's Hall, in Leeds, and had a wander around behind the scenes before the performance began. I was immediately struck by the disparity between the outward exoticism – the finery, the sequinned costumes, the plumes, the elaborate display – and the backstage ordinariness. At once I was enthralled by the sounds and smells, but I had no idea that the subject would capture and hold my imagination for the best part of three decades.

Soon I was crisscrossing the country, usually never hanging around for more than a single day and night. Transport and accommodation never seemed a problem. I had already decided to cut the ordinary necessities of life to a minimum. This would allow me more time and energy for taking photographs. Food and extra camera equipment also mattered little. I had no preconceived ideas about how to proceed and simply followed my intuition.

Sometime in the late Sixties, I had purchased a wooden plate camera while studying at Liverpool. I had paid ten shillings for it and had done little but dabble with it. The first two pictures taken at the Queen¹s Hall were my earliest real foray into a large format, and the big camera felt very cumbersome. It prevented me from working in the way I had become used to. It forced me, however, to study my pictures more on the ground-glass screen, and soon I found I welcomed the intrusion. It meant that I would take fewer pictures but would concentrate more on my subject.

One of my favourite photographs of all time is Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother', a picture taken on a large-format camera in 1936. Lange said whenever she saw this photograph reproduced "I give it a salute as to an old friend. I did not create it, but I was behind that big old Graflex, using it as an instrument for recording something of importance." While the picture itself has been an icon of mine for many years, I only recently came across her statement about it. I share her affection for the large-format camera.

On that same Christmas visit back to Wakefield, in 1970, I stumbled on a cache of Gandolfi cameras at an old industrial photographer's in a place called Garforth, just outside Leeds. On a hunch, I had done some telephoning around and found that the firm had recently turned to the new metal versions of the view camera. A whole car full of equipment was available, so I borrowed money from my parents and bought the lot. There were six whole-plate mahogany cameras and two 5 x 4s, with many lenses, shutters, and so forth. One lens that I purchased at the same time was an enormous brass encased Dalmeyer twelve-inch f3 portrait lens. Over the years, it has been used for a few of the pictures in this book, and they are recognisable from the lens's unique characteristics. Many of the other pictures were taken with the whole-plate camera, using a 5 x 4 reduction back. The bigger camera gave me more freedom of movement in lens shift. A light-weight micro-press also became a favourite. It was fast and strong and surprisingly versatile.

The circus did not turn out to be a simple subject to photograph. The performers' lives – often lived out in drab settings among canvas and ropes and sawdust and mud, with noisy machinery around or in cramped quarters – could have been made to look dreary and depressing. The irony and incongruity of girls in shimmering leotards standing in their high heels in a sea of mud was only too obvious. It would have been easy to mock them. Instead, I wanted to know about the other side to the other side of their lives – the extraordinary skills, the pride in performance. These aspects, set against the everyday threadbare reality, seemed to me to reveal a noble spirit. The brief glitter and finery were a magic box that had to be recreated for every performance against what appeared to be a backcloth of ungainly, well-worn equipment, busy disorder, and bad weather.

Observing circus people at length enabled me to look at them as individuals and to separate them from their performance but not from their basic surroundings. It was in this composition and its balance that I had hoped to capture what for me is the essence of a portrait photograph – the sitter's humanity.

I am in agreement with those artists who hold that the human heart is seen through the face. Therefore, when making a portrait, I treat the face as the main issue. To reveal everyday moods and emotions,I try to keep the sitter at his or her ease. I am particularly anxious to dispel the look of apprehension that most people assume before the camera. With circus artists, performers used to public exposure, getting through their self-consciousness was not as much of a problem as it can be with other people. In these portraits it seemed absolutely necessary and natural that the showgrounds and sometimes their surroundings should play an essential part.

I used to the full the liberal access the artists allowed me. I believed that I was making our contact that of equals.Rather than imposing on the subject a mask of sullen sameness, which seems the hallmark of many picture makers, I hoped that by not controlling my subjects' expressions I might capture and reveal their inner selves. My fervent hope is that I sometimes succeeded.

Around the time I was beginning my circus work, I became enchanted with the platinum print, particularly some made of cathedral interiors early in this century by Frederick H. Evans. They had a haunting quality of light: they glowed. The whites were ethereal and the blacks went on forever. This effect is achieved by particles of platinum being set in the paper surface so finely that they give a depth to the image that can be achieved by no other process. I felt that my circus pictures and platinum would be good partners. In 1974, I began experimenting with the process in earnest. All of the circus images have since been made in platinum emulsion. The majority of the work in this book is reproduced from platinum and the rest from silver bromide. No matter what the printing process, my aim has been to convey the character, dedication, and quite often beauty, of those who work so hard at the circus.
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