Elephant Long Mount Ringling Bros. And Barnum & Bailey Circus Photographer Unknown 20Th Century,Photographs & Cabinet

Gelatin silver print mounted on board, 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. (190 x 241 mm) from the Roland Butler Collection, Press Agent, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (1930s-1960s) Roland Butler Collection hand stamp on verso. When Barnum and Bailey's "Greatest Show on Earth" rolled into American towns . . . daily life abruptly stopped. Months before the show arrived, an advance team saturated the surrounding region with brilliantly colored lithographs of the extraordinary: elephants, bearded ladies, clowns, tigers, acrobats and trick riders. On "Circus Day," huge crowds gathered to observe the predawn arrival of "herds and droves" of camels, zebras, and other exotic animals-the spoils of European colonialism. Families witnessed the raising of a tented city across nine acres, and a morning parade that made its way down Main Street, advertising the circus as a wondrous array of captivating performers and beasts from around the world. For isolated American audiences, the sprawling circus collapsed the entire globe into a pungent, thrilling, educational sensorium of sound, smell and color, right outside their doorsteps." Janet M. Davis, "America's Big Circus Spectacular Has a Long and Cherished History" March 22, 2017 Smithsonian Magazine In the Milner Library at Illinois State University a print of this photograph is captioned: Column of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey performing elephants in hind leg stands on the hippodrome track in Madison Square Garden, New York.