In 2010, I visited small family circuses on the extreme outskirts of Lima during the day and photographed them (120 film, using a Hasselblad and Rollei). The work is entitled Moving Spectacles, as it visits the world of itinerant performers and because the circus families' strength despite adversity move me deeply.
The family circuses have always been nomadic for two principal reasons. They need to change venues every ten days or so to obtain the needed number of entries to the circus. Secondly, the Serenazgo, municipal security workers, come at night and tear down their tents and ruin their things. The municipalities fear that the circuses might lay claim to the land, and thus have ruled their presence as illegal. Many of the families in my photographs are children and grandchildren of circus performers and were born into this word of itinerant artists. I visited six different circuses in toto in three districts, San Juan de Lurigancho, Comas y El Augustino.
