In 1958 Bruce Davidson photographed the Beatty-Cole-Hamid Circus, 7 years later he got an assignment to shoot the Ringlington Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in North Carolina and 2 years after that, the James Duffy and Sons Circus in Ireland.

“It was in the Spring of 1958 that I found myself standing next to a dwarf at the Clyde Beatty Circus in an amusement park across the Hudson River in Palisades, New Jersey. I was 24 at the time, and living alone in Greenwich village, in a one room skylight flat with a dying Schefselera plant, a mattress on the floor, and a kitchen/darkroom combination with a sliding door and a red light in the refrigerator.” Bruce Davidson.