EXIT #39 considers how the world of the circus has been represented through photography.

In her editorial, The Greatest Show on Earth, Rosa Olivares writes about the fascination that the spectacle of the circus exerts on the onlooker and about how this fascination has been translated by photographers into the images that have been created on this subject. A fictional world in which the melancholic and the uncanny are hidden behind the scenes.

Helen Stoddart, Professor at Glasgow University and author of Rings of Desire: Circus History and Representation, traces in her essay The Suspending of the Instant the history of photography through the way in which photographers have represented the modern circus, from Nadar to the present day, and have fixed the ephemeral nature of a spectacle characterised by movement to paper.

Pogo the Clown, the article by Sergio Rubira, external editor of EXIT, takes the famous serial killer John Wayne Gacy as its starting point to analyse the uncanny component in the construction of the figure of the clown in contemporary art, focusing on the work of Cindy Sherman and Bruce Nauman.

The issue also includes two interviews: the first with Mary Ellen Mark, by Amber Gibson, and the second with Rhona Bitner, by Sergio Rubira, which show two very different ways of understanding the circus, from a documentary approach to a conceptual one.

Moreover, Paz Errázuriz and Anderson & Low write about their photographic series devoted to the circus in the portfolio sections devoted to them.

Texts: Helen Stoddart, Sergio Rubira.

Interviews: Rhona Bitner by Sergio Rubira and Mary Ellen Mark by Amber Gibson.

Portfolios: Anderson & Low, Paz Errázuriz.

Artists: Ryuta Amae, Anderson & Low, Diane Arbus, Irene Bayer-Hecht, Valérie Belin, Sergio Belinchón, Iñigo Beristain, Rhona Bitner, Maurizio Buscarino, Claude Cahun, Vari Caramés, Bruce Davidson, Harold Edgerton, Paz Errázuriz, Sandrine Expilly, Carole Fékété, Kimberly Gremillion, José Guerrero, Aurèle Hardouin, Roni Horn, Craigie Horsfield, Peter Hujar, Izis, Albert Londe, Edward J. Kelty, Mary Ellen Mark, Tina Mérandon, Rafal Milach, Lisette Model, José Muñoz, Nadar, Bruce Nauman, Erwin Olaf, Lise Sarfati, Ferdinando Scianna, Cindy Sherman, Umbo.

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