What My Friends Save: Circus Photos

Amanda Verwey's Wisconsin Circus Photo Archive

When I first imagined Brag Book, I saw it as a space to share my found photo collection with the world. A way to connect, spark conversations, maybe build a little community of like-minded paper-holder-on-ers who find inspo or emotion from old snapshots and ephemera. But as I sat with what this newsletter could become, I kept coming back to the incredible artists and writers in my circle. Everyone I know seems to take a little something from old artifacts. Since I was already collecting Other People’s Photos, what about Other People’s Photos collected by Other People?

Amanda Verwey’s Circus Photo Collection - 1915-1960s

Amanda Verwey was the first person I thought of for this ongoing friend series. She’s a brilliant writer and hilarious human in Los Angeles, and someone I don’t see nearly enough. Every time we hang out, I leave smiling and usually with a darkly funny one-liner she dropped stuck in my brain. She first told me about her recent find—her great-grandfather's circus photos—when we were at a mutual friend’s house in Joshua Tree. We had both left Los Angeles in a rush during the January fires. When I sped off to the desert from Pasadena, I tossed a small box of my found photo collection into my Honda, just in case my apartment wasn’t there when I returned. (It was, thank goodness.) In Joshua Tree, I forced Amanda to look at my vintage photos, because I’m “fun” like that. She was into them. And while Amanda didn’t bring her circus albums that day, I was excited to learn we had a shared interest unrelated to the depressing state of Hollywood.

This week, I saw Amanda’s collection in person and talked to her about what she kept. Now I get to share some of her collection with all of you! I didn’t scan the photos—to give you the feeling of paging through the albums, just as Amanda and I did—so please forgive the occasional glare.

It’s worth noting: Amanda declined to have her photo taken for this piece, even though I envisioned an opening shot of her striking a dramatic pose with the stack of found albums that once belonged to her great-grandfather (whom she sometimes calls grandpa in the interview). For the record, she has truly enviable hair—but as a modest weirdo, preferred to keep the focus on the photo collection. So that’s exactly what we’ll do.

And as always, we make it gay.

Clown Emmett Kelly Sr.

Are you usually a saver of things?

Amanda: I used to be like a pack rat, and then I tried to pare it down to just things I really liked aesthetically.

Your place is very curated.

Amanda: Thank you. This closet over here is full of shit, so I feel like a liar when I say I'm not a pack rat.

You mentioned you found these photos when your great aunt passed?

Amanda: Yeah, she had inherited my great-grandparents’ house when they died, and she just hoarded on top of all their stuff and then locked it up for 30 years. So then when I went in there, we did an archeological dig. When the boxes came out, all this cool weird family stuff appeared. My grandpa was a “circus historian,” that’s how he talked about himself, and he worked with the Baraboo Circus Museum in Wisconsin. These were all of his pictures and some of the dates on it… He would've been a young child for some of these, or a young man, but I know he took some of the photos because my grandma is in some, my aunt is in some, so I don't know if it's a combination of pictures that he took and pictures that his fellow historians took that he saved, but he didn't consider himself a photographer. These were historic documents to him, even though I think the pictures are pretty beautiful, so there's no signing them or thinking of them as art or anything really.

Do you know why he was into the circus?

Amanda: He was a cool guy. I feel like he had an escapist energy about him. He rode a motorcycle. He was really into boxing. He would travel around playing banjo in a big band, a jazz guy, so I don't know why he didn't just run away with the circus.

Show me your favorite photo.

Amanda: There's this one picture of two clowns talking and it's my favorite thing of the whole collection.

(At this point, Amanda flips through a couple of albums until she finds the below photo of two clowns, deep in conversation.)

“It's sort of a metaphor for being in the world as a freak.”

Amanda: I like that they look insane. I wrote a story about this. They also look like they're talking about whatever, like two coworkers talking, but he's wearing giant barefoot shoes and has the tuft of hair and the other guy is holding dying carnations or whatever he's got going on. I feel like all my friends and I are just freaks and we're just talking about regular life, wearing barefoot shoes, you know what I mean? It's sort of a metaphor for being in the world as a freak.

It's relatable. They're probably saying something like, "Meatloaf in the dinner tent again?!"

Amanda: I have all these memories—I worked in art institutions, and I traveled around doing weird shit with Jibz [Cameron] forever. We would be having serious conversations about whatever, and Jibz would be dressed with lipstick all over her face in a big wig. Or, I remember when Seth [Bogart] performed at this gallery I worked at and we were having a serious talk about something and he was dressed fully like a goblin, all green with ears. But we were having a regular conversation. In moments like that in my life, I was like, oh, I was the hobo clown. They were the tuft of hair clown.

I've been writing a lot about connecting found image collections to queerness. Even if what we're looking at is not explicitly gay, is it still a queer experience if we’re the ones discovering and holding onto the photos for whatever reason?

Amanda: I mean, there's nothing more queer and freakish than being a clown, but they also had to eat meatloaf. You know what I mean? I think that's the queerness for me in it. It’s behind the scenes of a queer life.

What else resonates with you besides the clown photo?

Amanda: In general, it makes me think about why my grandfather was obsessed with the circus. I immediately left my hometown and went around and did my thing. When he was young, it was a thing to run away with the circus. It's a joke phrase, but it was fashionable back then. It’s what the freaks did. You ran away with the circus. And I'm like, why did you just stay [in Wisconsin] and get obsessed with it? Why didn't you go out and do the thing?

It's so interesting to think about. I wonder if he had secrets.

Amanda: I don't know what his secret desires were. It's weird having an intimacy where you're uncovering your grandfather's pornography.

(Amanda goes into another room and brings out two large glass negatives, like at least 11” x 14”, of nude pin-up style portraits of women that her grandfather made, but I don’t think I’m allowed to show them on Substack? So, back to the circus!)

Amanda: You get an insight into these people who had really Lutheran lives in the Midwest and you’re trying to read between the lines of what an obsession with the circus would mean. He made all these miniatures of the circus wagons.

Grandfather “Bernie” with his miniatures.

Miniature circus wagons, based on his photos.

Do you feel closer to your grandfather by looking at these?

Amanda: He died when I was 15, but I spent a lot of time with him and my grandma when I was a child, and he was kind of crabby and scary, but I did think all of his stuff was cool. He was a woodworker too. They were like Scandinavian folks. So it's a big woodworking type of culture. I have all these memories of, like, sneaking up on him to observe what he was doing. So going through his stuff – he would've never let me go through his pictures when I was a kid. It does make me feel like I'm getting to know him differently and engaging with him in a way I never could have.

The woodworking is incredible! Where are those?

Amanda: Some people in my family have some. He made one for my mom that was just a circus wagon. He painted her name on the side in the style of the circus. I hope she still has that. I don't know. My mom's not a pack rat. She throws everything in the garbage immediately. I went home to clear out [my great-aunt’s] things, and it was as if my cleaning out the hoarding spurred this idea that she needed to clean out her things. And she was like, come get your shit from your childhood out of the basement. She's just not sentimental. I had to go over there and the first thing on the pile was –– you know how they take prints of your baby feet when you're born? That was on the top of the pile.

What would you say to someone queer or anyone who inherited a family archive similar to this? And they don’t know what to do with all the photos?

Amanda: I mean, I'm keeping it, but I don't know if that's the best idea. I'm just going to be lugging these around forever? You can scatter them over my coffin one day. It's hard because you say queer people broadly, but it's like, a lot of queer people are so normal and they're going to have a million kids and the babies are going to inherit the albums, but I don't know who will get these albums. For now, I get 'em. Maybe the Baraboo Circus will get 'em later.

A very special thanks to Amanda Verwey for sharing this photo collection with me and Brag Book! Are you a pal who wants to share some found photos or scraps for a future post on Brag Book? Let me know what you’ve got in the comments!