Bruce Davidson - The Dwarf. The Palisades, New Jersey, USA, 1958

Bruce Davidson. Jimmy Armstrong, 'The Dwarf'. The Palisades, New Jersey, USA, 1958.

There are a number of recurring characters featured in Circus: the elephants and a young girl who rode them into the ring; Hugo Zacchini the “canon man”; and Emmett Kelly, one of the most famous American clowns of the 20th Century. But none had a more profound effect on Davidson than Jimmy Armstrong, a dwarf clown from the Clyde Beatty circus.

'Copyright Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos' on the back of the image.

Total dimensions: 35,3 x 27,4 cm on semi-gloss paper.

Fine condition (with small imperfections).

Bruce Davidson was 24 when he visited the Clyde Beatty Circus. In 1958, combined with the Cole Brothers and Hamid-Morton, the circus raised a gargantuan three-ring tent at the Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. One spring morning Davidson headed off there at the suggestion of Sam Holmes, who was in charge of the picture library at Magnum at the time. The photographs he began to take that day would go on to form the first part of one of his most seminal bodies of work: Circus, a black-and-white visual chronicle of mid-century big tops in America as the cultural phenomenon was beginning to die out.

One of the most influential photographers of the 20th century along with other photographers of his time such as: Man Ray, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Philippe Halsman, Diane Arbus, Eve Arnold, Robert Doisneau, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz, Steve McCurry, among many others.