Object Details
Artist
Mary Ellen Mark
Date
1989
Medium
Gelatin silver print Edition 3/25
Dimensions
Image: 15 1/2 × 15 7/16 inches (39.4 × 39.2 cm)
Sheet: 15 7/8 × 20 inches (40.3 × 50.8 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Dr. Diana Wisdom and Gabriel Wisdom, in honor of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Class of 1954
Object
Number
2020.019.016
Mary Ellen Mark fell in love with India, and specifically its circus, on her first visit there in 19(…)
Mary Ellen Mark fell in love with India, and specifically its circus, on her first visit there in 1969. In this photograph, her tight framing highlights the contorted exertion of Chitra and Tracy of the Great Bombay Circus. Mark captures the circus as a space of immense talent, competition, risk, and vulnerability at a time when circuses were visible across India.
As the writer John Irving commented in the foreword to Mark’s photobook Indian Circus:
The circus is an oasis within a country in turmoil; the circus is a cloister within a world of chaos. . . . Who are most of the acrobats? They are children, mostly girls; for many of them, the alternative to this life would have been begging (or starving) or prostitution. And what is the circus life for them? It is three performances a day, every day. To bed about midnight, up about six . . . the real life here is not seen in performing; rather it is seen in the daily life in the troupe tents and in the dusty aisles between the tents—it is best seen as a life of practice, and rest, and more practice.Mark’s interest in acrobats was later featured in the film The Amazing Plastic Lady (1992), about a trainer and his troupe of child acrobats, which she produced with her husband, director Martin Bell.
—Ayesha Matthan, PhD candidate
