Rogier Maaskant Photography
In 1994, the second year of my study, I had the notion that in order to get images that would speak to the imagination there had to be an ‘exotic’ element in the subject matter. The circus had long been a theme explored by famous photographers; work by Bruce Davidson and Diane Arbus showed me it should be not too difficult to get imagery that shows life in a world which is not ours.
I decided to follow the Dutch ‘Circus Royal’ on their tour around the Netherlands and made these ‘documentary’ pictures as well as a series of portraits, which led to my first publication in the national newspaper Trouw. Four portraits were used to illustrate a story about the struggle of circus-life.
