The Greatest Show on Mud: Edwin Martin’s Photographs of Traveling Circuses

The following guest post by Adam M. Silvia, Curator of Photography in the Prints & Photographs Division, is based on his interview with Edwin Martin on October 8, 2024.

Last year photographer Edwin Martin generously placed 138 of his photographs of traveling circuses in the care of the Library of Congress. An extraordinary record of a challenging way of life, the collection is a testament to the hard work and dedication of circus members who, for over 200 years, have brought joy to the American people. In honor of World Circus Day (April 19th), we are sharing excerpts from a recent interview with Martin about his experiences.

“It was a dreary day,” says Martin. “It was wet and soggy and damp and cold.” The year was 1985, and Martin was in Cedar City, Missouri traveling with the Carson & Barnes Circus when he took a picture of three circus elephants, strapped into harnesses, pulling a semi-truck into a field. The plan was to erect a large tent in the open lot, but “it was very wet,” explains Martin. “The truck couldn’t move on its own. It was too heavy.”

Carson & Barnes was one of six circuses photographed by Martin from 1983 to 1986. “I think most people have a view of the circus as glamorous,” he muses. “The circuses I traveled with [however] were colloquially known as ‘mud shows.’” Unlike the world-famous Ringling Brothers Circus, which nowadays performs in enclosed venues, “mud shows [are] on dirt, and when it rains, the dirt turns to mud.”

For Martin, it was an unlikely journey. “I knew next to nothing [about the circus]” when the project began, and “I had only been doing photography [for] maybe three or four years.” Martin was a philosophy professor at Indiana University Bloomington who enjoyed photographing his two sons with his Pentax K1000. Curious about the medium, he audited photography courses at the university and then formally enrolled in the program as a student.

Documenting mud shows was originally a school project that began serendipitously in 1983, when Carson & Barnes visited Indiana. “I had gone down and spent an afternoon making photographs, one of which I liked,” says Martin. “I [made] a copy of the picture” and “wrote them a letter suggesting that I come and travel with them and make photographs.” Martin laughs. “In retrospect, this was a pretty audacious proposal!”

The following year, Martin happily boarded a plane to California to join up with Carson & Barnes. “I found them in Lake Isabella,” he recalls. “[They were] in the desert” and “were putting up the tent.” Martin raised his camera and took a stunning photograph. “It was very dusty and very dirty,” he says. “The dust [caught] the light coming through the holes in the tent.” The mud show or, in this case, the dust bowl, was “visually interesting,” and this inspired Martin.

Martin would spend the next three weeks traveling with Carson & Barnes through California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. “It became clear to me very quickly that this was a hard life,” he says. “I was sleeping in one of the 18-wheelers on a lawn chair that opened up, and I was eating in the cookhouse.” The menu: “a lot of beans.” Like everyone else, he bathed in a giant bucket. “They provided water, but you had to carry it, so you could have all the water you could carry.”

Each morning, “we got up before dawn,” explains Martin. “[We] got in the truck[s] and drove for 100 miles” to the next destination. Upon arrival, “everybody piled out of the trucks and started unrolling the tent and taking the animals out.” Martin walked about, taking photographs. “One of the pictures I like a lot is that of Phil [a clown] putting on his make-up and EJ [another clown] sleeping like a log.” The image “illustrates the need to sleep whenever you can.” It reflects “how fractured [this] life really is.”

Several of Martin’s photos depict children living among the circus adults. “Acrobatic acts and trapeze acts,” he explains, “were [often] families with a long tradition of performing,” and “many of those families had children who traveled with them full-time…. They had… what you might think of as home-schooling,” and “they spent a lot of time growing into performers.”

Similarly, Martin was becoming a practiced circus photographer. “The circus involves a lot of repetition, with variation,” he explains, so “one advantage of this prolonged [project] was seeing things I failed to photograph that I could look for subsequently.” Martin recalls a photo of EJ silhouetted by the light inside a tent. “I worked on [this] several times,” says Martin. “[It took] several days to get the right conditions.”

The task was complicated by not having a traveling darkroom and having to wait until he returned home to develop his film. “You’re not sure what you got until after you develop it,” explains Martin. “I numbered all my rolls and kept a log of where they had been shot.” This was important, because “I didn’t develop all the film exactly alike…. I batched [it]…. I was trying to develop for high contrast [and] low contrast situations.” This required “a lot of bookkeeping.”

The final images were impactful, especially for the subjects. The following year, Martin reunited with Carson & Barnes in Wisconsin; “I took a bunch of [prints] that I had made and handed them out.” The circus members were touched. “They enjoyed having the pictures,” says Martin. “There were a lot of people [mostly spectators] taking pictures of them, but not a lot of people giving pictures to them.”

Martin developed a profound respect for the individuals he photographed and the talents they possessed. “What you don’t realize [about the highwire and trapeze acts],” he says, “is how hot it is in the summertime at the top of a tent. The heat all gathers. It’s probably over one-hundred degrees, so that makes performing really difficult.” Martin was also impressed by Pat, tamer of big cats. “She was skilled and had [special] knowledge,” he explains. “She was a valued member of the troupe.”

Martin would go on to photograph for The Indianapolis News and other newspapers. He also undertook independent projects documenting tobacco farming in Wendell, North Carolina and the fishing community on Harkers Island. Photographing mud shows “was a big encouragement,” he says. “I learned a lot.” By the time his mud show project concluded in 1986, Martin was proud to call himself a photographer. “I think one of the strengths of photography… is documenting ways of life that we don’t really know, that we only have vague ideas about.”

The Prints & Photographs Division is very grateful to Edwin Martin for entrusting the Library of Congress with his photographs and giving this interview. We invite researchers to view more of this collection by making an appointment to visit the Prints & Photographs Reading Room.

Learn More:

• Request Edwin Martin’s book Hope for a Good Season (Harkers Island) in Jefferson and Adams building reading rooms.
• Search for circus posters in the Library’s Circus, Carnival, and Rodeo Poster Collection.
• Search the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Photograph Collection for Walker Evans photographs of circus posters in the American South.