The Circus: A Traveling Life series chronicles a ten-year collaboration between Norma I. Quintana and an American, traveling one-ring circus. This haunting and intimate portrait series, shot with black and white film using available light, captures contemplative and playful moments with the families of artists and performers, off-stage and in the back of the house, as they proudly perfect their craft. As author Mona Simpson explains, “The trust between photographer and subject that developed over that time is evident. Quintana took her time learning the lineage of these circus families. She presents them not as freaks or compulsives, but as workers in a private, insular, now almost-extinct world.”

Quintana’s photography monograph, Circus: A Traveling Life was designed by Yolanda Cuomo of New York and published by Damiani Editore of Italy. It features nearly a hundred full-page, luminous black and white portraits, reproduced in duotones by master printer, Robert Hennessey. Limited editions are availible here.