Last Sideshow - Softcover

  • 4.30 out of 5 stars
    10 ratings by Goodreads
 
9781904688020: Last Sideshow
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1904688020 ISBN 13: 9781904688020
Publisher: Dazed Books, 2004

Synopsis

The Last Sideshow is a wonderful chronicle of an American community of traveling circus performers. As a contributor to Vogue, GQ and Elle, Hanspeter Schneider's professional life has focused on the artifice of beauty. In his new book he challenges popular assumptions and captures beauty with charm and understanding, in perhaps the most unusual of places. The portraits have humor, dignity and vivacity but above all they are a fascinating account of a disappearing community.

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About the Author

Hanspeter Schneider has worked as Art Director for advertising agencies in Switzerland, Germany, England and France. As a photographer, he regularly contributes to fashion magazines such as Vogue, GQ, Details, Marie Claire and Elle and lifestyle magazines including Conde Nast Traveller and Sport Illustrated. His photographs have been exhibited worldwide including: Festival de le Mode, Barcelona; The Art of Photography, London; Parco Gallery, Tokyo.

Reviews

Gibsonton is a small town on the Gulf Coast of Florida that serves as the off-season refuge—and, increasingly, retirement home—for a community of circus performers and carnival sideshow freaks. Here sympathetic zoning regulations don't penalize you for keeping a roller coaster parked in front of your house or an elephant in the back yard. Schneider's high-contrast black-and-white portraits of Gibsonton residents present the aging members (some now deceased) of a rapidly diminishing tribe: Jeanie Tomaini, the Half Lady, who is the proprietor of the local bait shop; the Welde family, with their tutu-clad dancing bear; and the nonagenarian Human Blockhead hammering giant nails into his right nostril. Tomaini's daughter remarks, "When your father is an eight-foot, four-inch giant and your mother is two feet six inches with no legs, some outsiders think you must have a really weird home life," but these photographs achieve a winning sense of the everyday.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Publisher
Dazed Books
Publication date
2004
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1904688020
ISBN 13 
9781904688020
Binding
Paperback
Edition number
1
Number of pages
160
Rating
  • 4.30 out of 5 stars
    10 ratings by Goodreads