Stephanie Gengotti

Circus Love - The Magical Life of Europe’s Family Circuses

'Circus Love' is a story about nomadic families that embody much more than a bohemian lifestyle. Their circuses are unconventional and made by artists who have reinterpreted and expanded the traditional concept with freaks and animals as conceived by Barnum & Bailey: The ‘nouveau cirque’ is an encounter and union between the many disciplines and arts.

Circus families live by travelling around the world, performing in international street art festivals, and offering their show to those ready to be surrounded by wonder and beauty. Unfortunately, what they bring back to life is a disappearing world and they can be considered the last heirs.

These families – who have consecrated their lives to modern circus art – can, as far as possible, indicate a path of wisdom to the rest of the confused humanity of our days. These creative nomads base their social organisation on women's analytical, strategic, and empathic abilities. The modern circus is a perfect mechanism guided by an illuminated matriarchy, a wise wink to ancient philosophies.

The circus seems like an outdated concept, but it is so perfect: like a symbol of a world without frontiers, a globalised, multiethnic wheel that spins and squeaks, relentlessly and without a pause. With its delight and despair, the circus is a metaphor for life. The lives of the artists are filled with love, victory and triumph, defeat, and humiliation. Their nomadic lifestyle follows diagonal lines or circular routes, like the cycles of seasons.

The circus symbolises freedom and enslavement with the liberty to not obey a master or borders. However, the circus performers are slaves to relentlessly cold and rainy winters, which invade the precarious caravans, but also of scorching summers in which the suffocating sun beats down on the dusty roads to barter with one’s last breath.

They work for themselves, their families, and fellow adventurers. The circus is not only art and creativity but also patience and preparation, physical training, and manual labour. It consists of study, design, blood, sweat, working diligently for hours to develop a new show and long days of gruelling trials. All this perhaps with not much money in your pocket and little food in your pantry, content with your staging ground which can also be only the parking lot of a supermarket.

Its greatest virtue coincides with its own greatest limit: the impossibility of a definitive goal, the eternal search for something which perhaps exists… Or maybe not. It is a longing. It is timeless.

Circus life confirms that humanity still exists in this hyper-technological world where algorithms decide people's lives. 'Circus Love' is a joyous but powerful scream of rebellion to reaffirm the human dimension, highlight the priority and recover a sense of sharing, of family, as well as the sublime ability to do things with your hands and rediscover a relationship with Nature.

'Circus Love' is a long-term project started in 2016 on the ‘nouveau cirque’, also known as a contemporary circus. It delves into the story by telling the history and daily life of six circus families, three of which are exhibited here.

'The Brunette Bros.' is the second smallest circus in the world, ironically inspired by Alexander Calder, inventor of the micro circus which can be carried in two suitcases. Founded by two women 15 years ago it travels around Europe in vintage caravans.

‘Cirque Bidon’ is an amazing French circus created in the 1970s by François Bidon, who travels around Europe on horse-drawn caravans.

'Raluy Legacy Circus' is a Spanish family circus born with an ambitious dream, now draws its strength from the women of the house, brings together the traditional and the contemporary in an entertaining and harmonious blend.

Stephanie Gengotti (Rome, 1972) is an Italian/French photographer based in Rome. She is a reclaimed photojournalist, fashion and portrait photographer. Her home in Rome serves as the starting point for her explorations; it is the lab where she prepares and processes all her storytelling ingredients. Born to the parentage of flight attendants, she has explored the world since her childhood. She experienced life first-hand without any filter, which created an urge to narrate the least explored aspects of human society.

She works mainly with reportage photography and portraiture, and her work has been awarded and exhibited in numerous shows in Italy and abroad. In addition, her work has been published in many editorials and publications, including Internazionale, GEO Magazine, Le Monde Magazine, Stern, Der Spiegel, National Geographic, The New York Times, The Sunday Times Magazine, Sekai, The Guardian, Le Monde, 6 Mois, L’Espesso, Yo Dona, China Newsweek, El Mundo, Vanity Fair, IL, Il Reportage and more. She is currently represented by Institute Artist.