Kicking Sawdust

The world changes and we evolve. We come to realize that wild animals are not happy in captivity and that showcasing people with differences/disabilities is insensitive. Barnum and Bailey (the animal circus) closes after 146 years while Cirque du Soleil (the human circus) thrives. These photos capture some of the essence of a disappearing way of life.

Author Biography

Clayton Anderson is a photographer and advertising art director who lives and works in New York City. In 1988 Clayton went out on the road to work in the circus, carnival and fair circuit with the family’s traveling cinnamon roll food concession. He brought along a camera and photographed his experiences there. This year his circus work was shown at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA) in Tampa, FL. and the SE Center for Photography in Greenville, SC. Some of his newer work will be shown at Praxis Gallery in Minneapolis, MN. Clayton worked for and was mentored by some noted photographers that include Jack Pierson, David Seidner, Josef Astor and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Kicking Sawdust, published by Daylight Books, is his first monograph. Jack Pierson was born in 1960 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1984. He lives and works in New York. Pierson has had recent solo exhibitions at the CAC Malaga, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Aspen Art Museum. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other museums worldwide. Pierson is represented by Cheim & Read, New York. Katharine Kavanagh has a background in devised performance; she has been writing about circus since 2013 when she launched The Circus Diaries – a multi-platform hub for critical discourse centered on the circus arts. In addition to exploring how critical practices are nurtured among circus professionals, Katharine also leads workshops and residencies and lectures at the National Centre for Circus Arts in London. She has recently been awarded funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council to undertake a PhD, commencing in September 2018 at the School of English, Language and Communication at Cardiff University.