A rare first edition of the circus photography book by Bruce Davidson
published by steidl
Bruce Davidson was 24 when he visited the Clyde Beatty Circus. In 1958, combined with the Cole Brothers and Hamid-Morton, the circus raised a gargantuan three-ring tent at the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. One spring morning Davidson headed off there at the suggestion of Sam Holmes, who was in charge of the picture library at Magnum at the time. The photographs he began to take that day would go on to form the first part of one of his most seminal bodies of work: Circus, a black-and-white visual chronicle of mid-century big tops in America as the cultural phenomenon was beginning to die out.
