A man flips through a novel, perched atop a pair of giant stilts. Elephants graze through short grass while clowns cavort in front of a cheering crowd. These are images of a bygone time and a spectacle since forgotten\u2014the Ringling Brothers Circus.<\/p>\n
These images are coming to Huntsville as part of a special new exhibit by Canadian\/American artist and photographer Elizabeth Siegfried, who reclaimed the images from forgotten film reels found in her family’s cottage outside Algonquin Park.<\/p>\n
Rummaging through a wooden crate left for years, Siegfried expected to find broken dishes and other household minutiae. Instead, she discovered a box of wonder, revealing reels of 16 mm film that took Siegfried on a journey back in time. The footage was captured by Siegfried\u2019s grandmother, Elizabeth Chapin White, during family trips to the Ringling Brothers Circus in Rochester, New York and Sarasota, Florida between 1927 and 1945.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was as though my grandmother had reached through time to give me a tremendous gift,\u201d Siegfried says. She quickly realized she and her grandmother shared more than just a name and the same photographic sensibility\u2014they even shared traveling routes. Around the time she discovered the films, Siegfried and her husband had purchased a home in Sarasota, Florida. \u201cI knew it must be kismet. I also knew that I was about to embark on an important and deeply meaningful cross-generational collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n
Siegfried spent the next four years transferring over 90 reels of film to digital video and watched vivid scenes and stories from the Ringling Brothers Circus come to life. The scenes revealed an historic golden era of the circus, never to be experienced again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Ringling Circus closed in 2017 after 146 years of being an American icon,\u201d says Siegfried. \u201cMy grandmother\u2019s images not only document the behind-the-scenes experience of the back lot and the intriguing famous clowns of the day\u2014her images are poignant glimpses into the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Decades later, Siegfried has given these stories new life, carefully selecting individual frames and converting them into large-scale photographic prints for her exhibition, CIRCUS!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t\t