Step Right This Way: The Photographs of Edward J. Kelty

by Edward J. Kelty, Miles Barth, Alan M. Siegel

From Booklist
The successor to Barth and Alan Siegel's eye-popping One Man's Eye (2000) is also concerned with a particular person's vision, this time not photo collector Siegel's but that of a professional banquet photographer with a sideline in circus publicity. Edward J. Kelty's circus pictures, taken from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, consist of group portraits of clowns, sideshow attractions, bands, elephants, menageries, aerialists, equestrians, tractor and train crews, candy butchers (seen with their backs turned to show the "Baby Ruth Candy" logo on their smocks), and even everybody in the Ringling-Barnum cookhouse tent on July 4, 1935. He also lensed stars such as lion-tamer Clyde Beatty, teenage tightrope walker Harold Barnes, and Hugo Zacchini, Human Projectile (posed atop his cannon), and interior and exterior panoramas of circuses pitched in Tarrytown, Terre Haute, and other fair burghs. Kelty used a specially made "banquet" camera that produced 12-by-20-inch images. Reproduced here at about two-fifths that size and as originally tinted (sepia or cyan) when appropriate, they are scrumptious, sometimes outrageous (see "Cheerful Gardner," who worked with elephants--sheesh!) eye-candy. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, History

144 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2002

Reviews

[TriCedratops · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. My interest in this book is my fascination with the old freakshows, of which there are plenty of great photos, but all of the photos in this book are quite phenomenal. It really gives you an idea of what a mass production the old circus' must have been - significantly larger than the old Shriner's circus that rolled through my town anyway. The costumes are incredible and the photos of the clowns are the stuff nightmares are made of.

I particularly enjoyed the witty and gritty preface by former circus roadie Alan Siegel which has stirred a desire to seek out bios and hopefully autobiographies of other circus, carny, and freakshow folk, both on the stage and behind the scenes.

The large format is fantastic for the detail of the photos as there is so much to see in them. My plan now is to go through the book again with a magnifying glass and perhaps even try to obtain a couple of these prints for my home.

The only disappointment is that more of Kelty's photographs and negatives didn't survive.

[Julie Grace Immink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Congress of Geek Love

[Charity · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really phenomenal book. As expected, there were a lot of interesting, amazing-for-their-time photos by E.J. Kelty but there was so much history included as well. For example, there aren't a lot of Circus photos left because most circuses had a photographer who traveled with them but those photos were primarily used for ads so they were tossed when the Circus passed through. Kelty had to pay the Circus Master/Owner 50% of his sales to have access to everyone from the cools to stars.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very nice collection of photos from photographer Edward J. Kelly. Unfortunately, his work was not well preserved, so the images are mostly copies from old prints, and there is very little information about the subjects of the photographs. There are a couple essays in the book as well, one about Kelty’s life and one about circus life in general. The latter seems too biased (communicating more judgements and opinions than information) to be of much value.

[Deborah Likens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!

[Nicco Mele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent coffee table book & companion to Water for Elephants.