room for paper 06 - Susan Felter: clowns and divas, photographs 1981-1985

For exhibition 06 in the room for paper we are presenting vintage C-Prints by noted Bay Area photographer Susan Felter, selections from a series she worked on in the early to mid 1980s while capturing the antics of the Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus and the Circus Vargas. Felter's w... Read more

For exhibition 06 in the room for paper we are presenting vintage C-Prints by noted Bay Area photographer Susan Felter, selections from a series she worked on in the early to mid 1980s while capturing the antics of the Ringling Brothers/Barnum & Bailey Circus and the Circus Vargas. Felter’s work evokes a perennial nostalgia while managing to stay current through the depth of her psychology and the precision of her composition–a balance so complete I found it difficult to even crop an image for the postcard. Felter brings a new level of coalescence to events already staged for the ring, and a compassionate empathy to unguarded moments outside the ring, to dive beneath the crowd-pleasing artifice of the circus, creating images that are best described as intimacies.