Freak Show: Awesome Circus Photography By Edward Kelty

Edward J. Kelty, a former US Navy man, fell in love with the circus sideshows of Coney Island in 1921. Bolstered by an extended subway line, New York's great seaside attraction boomed after 1920, and the boardwalk was lined with a parade of midgets, giants, strongmen, sword swallowers, and tattooed women. The leading entertainers, like the Lobster Boy and the Wrestling Fat Girls, pulled thousands of viewers in the summer season.

Among them, few were as entrepreneurial in spirit as Kelty. He'd trained as a photographer, but struggled to find a distinct niche before the lights of Coney Island prompted a career long obsession. He travelled the United States, capturing the performers that fueled the carnival trade (and massive shows like Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey), focusing almost exclusively on freak show portraits.

His firm, Century Photographers, specialized in small scale pictures of sideshows and built an impressive catalog in from 1925 to the dawn of the Great Depression. On such image is the group portait of clowns shown here. One clown is scary. Twenty-seven of them will make you lose your shit. Note the poor pooch bedecked in a head-to-paw leopard outfit. Kelty took this photograph about 1935 for lesser known circus Hagenbeck-Wallace.

The remaining photographs shared in this feature are unpublished before now. All illuminate both the sideshow trade and Kelty's unique style of portrait photography.

All images courtesy of Derin Bray, edwardjkelty.com.

Check out Freak Show: Awesome Circus Photography By Edward J. Kelty.

Kelty was fond of organizing spectacular group shots. In this photo he captures the entire 1937 cast of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

It’s hard to believe 300lb women were ever shocking. This quartet of freaks would find stiff competition from any suburban Wal-Mart.

Freakery is about showmanship. Jack Earl and Major Mite always brought their costumed A-game.

Giants have the best bespoke clothing. Check out the cage of wild hyenas in the background.

Midgets and giants have long been the yin and yang of circus side shows. Kelty captures that perfectly in this portrait of Jim Tarver, The Texas Giant, and Major Mite, “the smallest man in the world.”

Tall people without talent have been dressing up in silly uniforms long before the NBA. Jack Earl, seen here, made additional bank as a salesman and actor in the 1924 silent film Jack & The Bean Stalk. Guess which character he played?

Turns out there’s a precedent for clownery at MSQ. Move over Carmleo and Amare, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey have been freaking out the good people of New York since 1929 (and probably earlier!).

When you bought a photo from Kelty, not only did you get a piece of circus history, but a neat bit of photography history in the form of his mailing labels.