Circus: A Traveling Life

For a decade, photographer Norma I. Quintana followed an American, traveling one-ring circus photographing its acrobats, aerialists and artists. Not satisfied to snap images from the stands, Quintana photographed her subjects in motion, perfecting their craft. The resulting black and white photography book, Circus: A Traveling Life documents the everyday lives of these performers in “back of the house.” The book will be launched internationally this October. Designed by Yolanda Cuomo of New York and published by Damiani Editore of Bologna, Italy, it is being distributed by the D.A.P. Artbook Catalog. It will join a universal and long-standing tradition of circus photography, alongside the work of Diane Arbus, Jill Freedman and Edward Weston. There is a marked intimacy in Quintana’s photographs, achieved by slowly introducing herself into a community of performance families. As Mona Simpson, author of Anywhere But Here, describes in her introduction to Circus: A Traveling Life, “The trust between photographer and subject that developed over that time is evident. Quintana took her time learning the lineage of these circus families. She presents them not as freaks or compulsives, but as workers in a private, insular, now almost-extinct world.” An analog photographer in the 21st century, Quintana creates rich, dynamic black and white portraits with a medium format Hasselblad camera and an intuitive eye. She explains how she was able to capture performance artists, in constant motion, without the conveniences of digital photography: “I learned to trust my own vision and imagination in the face of unforeseen events. I tried to capture these values through my lens, just as I was captured by the circus.”