サーカストループの強い絆を捉えた写真: ひとつの大きな家族

It’s difficult to know where to start with the life and times of Keiran Perry. The story from his “proper hippie” childhood in the north of England, where Gary from next door fell through the kitchen ceiling in a bathtub full of water? His years studying nature photography in Blackpool, where the only real “nature” was seagulls and drunken revellers spied from the rooftops of the seaside town’s clubs? His more recent immersion in an off-grid community in the Scottish Highlands, studying earth-based, shamanic wisdom? Over the phone, as the photographer drives to Manchester to install his latest show at Village, the stories come thick and fast, each wilder than the last.

The logical place to begin, though, is Perry’s fateful introduction to the travelling circus that fills the pages of his new book, Smoke Filled Mirror. As the world returned to ‘normal’ after the Covid pandemic, Perry travelled to Morecambe – another Lancashire seaside town – in his van, following a tip from a friend. “It was chucking it down,” he remembers of his arrival. “The rain was just tearing in off the sea. I pulled up onto the promenade, and there was this big top tent. In a circle all around it were these caravans, glowing like a beacon. It drew me in, this little camp, this little glowing heart.”

Perry got out of his van and went to introduce himself, but as he walked toward the circus, a huge dog stepped out of the shadows. “Imagine a wolf, but much thicker and heavier,” he says. “I remember there was this hot dog on the floor, covered in ketchup and American mustard, and this dog just gulped it down in one go and carried on walking toward me. I was like, ‘Oh no. What am I doing?’” Thankfully, a voice called out from the dark as the dog walked circles around him – it was the daughter of the Bulgarian family who owned and ran the circus. “Don’t mind Star,” she called. “He’s harmless.” Minutes later, Perry was in her caravan drinking a cup of tea, and he was immediately made to feel at home. Star, meanwhile, took a seat on Perry’s lap, and his furry face would become the opening image in Smoke Filled Mirror.

The photographer’s first stint with the circus lasted two weeks, but he’d link up with it again several times over the next two years, as it toured the north of England and Scotland. It was like entering into “one big family” he says, hailing from a melting pot of cultures across South and Central America, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Kyrgyzstan, and elsewhere. Each was an essential part of the circus itself, he adds. “It was like a big living animal that needs a lot of care in order for it to work.” As seen in Perry’s photographs, performers doubled as cooks, repairmen, and mechanics. “The guys on the trapeze were flying through the air at night, like a crystal chandelier or some mythical creature, and the next day they were cooking everyone’s sausages and eggs on the barbecue.”

Perry, who grew up in Colne and Burnley in “the antithesis of a London lifestyle”, moved to London after college to work as a photographer’s assistant, and eventually started to get his own work. For a few years, he got pulled in by the fast-paced, competitive process of carving out a career in the capital. Then Covid hit. “I was at home a lot, and me and my girlfriend broke up, so I was left in this place where I started to really reflect on things,” he explains. “I was feeling as if I wasn’t in charge of where things were going. I was just being pulled down the river, and in that river you get hit with rapids, and little bits and pieces of yourself fall by the wayside.”

This realisation took Perry down two, intertwined paths. On the one hand, he was drawn to the shamanic wisdom he still practices today, based on “slowing down and listening to yourself, listening to your gut, and your heart… that mind inside your body”. On the other, he built a shed at the bottom of his garden with his dad and rented out his house, using his newfound freedom to travel around in his van. That’s how he ended up in Morecambe, at the circus, which offered a distantly-familiar counterpoint to his hectic London life.

[At the circus] everything’s metal and canvas and fire… I could taste home, I could almost smell bits of my childhood, my history – Keiran Perry

Growing up as part of a big and “pretty skint” family up north, life was chaotic in its own way, Perry admits. “But everyone just banded together.” Even when Gary fell through the ceiling in a bathtub: “It was funny, and there was a lot of camaraderie.” The circus was the same. “Everything’s broken and in a constant state of needing fixing. Everything’s metal and canvas and fire, quite harsh and rustic,” he says. “I could taste home, I could almost smell bits of my childhood, my history. I found that really enriching. It made me use that mind inside my body, rather than being in my head.”

Often, Perry didn’t even take pictures. He’d just hang out, hand out fliers, and help the circus workers put seats together. “I probably got in the way a couple of times,” he laughs. “And they work so hard. To be clear, it’s a brutally hard graft, but that’s what makes them resilient, and binds them together.” When he did take his camera out, he saw it more as a tool for connection than anything else, a way to start a conversation and open the door to new friendships. For Perry, this is what it’s all about: entering into a community, being open to their way of life, and prioritising a real experience over snapping the perfect photograph. 

In the end, of course, the intimacy of the photographer’s relationships shines through in the images themselves, whether they show motorbikes riding rings around the ‘Globe of Death’, or several generations of Ukrainian refugees sharing a tender moment in their caravan. At the circus, he says, he felt “this incredible, safe environment of sharing and love. Those moments… you can’t choreograph that. You have to be a part of it, not be apart from it.”

This sense of authenticity in Smoke Filled Mirror also comes from a place of loving what you do and tapping into that intuitive “mind inside your body”, Perry suggests. For him, this came via his time with the circus: “I was expanding out into the world, especially post-pandemic, but it was just as much an inward journey too. It made me really present, and really alive, not so much in my head.”

As a result of this experience, Perry realised that there are basically two paths in life for a young photographer. “Both lead nowhere… you could imagine a place, but it will never be that.” Even so, the path you take to “nowhere” is important. “Don’t get caught up in the mind, its internal judgement, because that will lead you down the wrong path,” he says. “But there’s another way that’s full of heart, it’s full of adventure.” How do you find it? “It’s about tuning into yourself, listening to that quiet voice in the back of the mind.”

“You don’t need to be somebody else. That’s your gift. You can do you better than anyone else can.”

Keiran Perry’s Smoke Filled Mirror is now available via New Dimension, in collaboration with Pendle Press. The book is edited by Sherif Dhaimish, with art direction and design by Alex Currie, and creative direction by Ben Goulder.

The accompanying exhibition opens at Village in Manchester on 17 January 2025, with an opening event and book signing from 6pm-9pm, and runs until February 16.⁣⁣

It’s difficult to know where to start with the life and times of Keiran Perry. The story from his “proper hippie” childhood in the north of England, where Gary from next door fell through the kitchen ceiling in a bathtub full of water? His years studying nature photography in Blackpool, where the only real “nature” was seagulls and drunken revellers spied from the rooftops of the seaside town’s clubs? His more recent immersion in an off-grid community in the Scottish Highlands, studying earth-based, shamanic wisdom? Over the phone, as the photographer drives to Manchester to install his latest show at Village, the stories come thick and fast, each wilder than the last.

The logical place to begin, though, is Perry’s fateful introduction to the travelling circus that fills the pages of his new book, Smoke Filled Mirror. As the world returned to ‘normal’ after the Covid pandemic, Perry travelled to Morecambe – another Lancashire seaside town – in his van, following a tip from a friend. “It was chucking it down,” he remembers of his arrival. “The rain was just tearing in off the sea. I pulled up onto the promenade, and there was this big top tent. In a circle all around it were these caravans, glowing like a beacon. It drew me in, this little camp, this little glowing heart.”

Perry got out of his van and went to introduce himself, but as he walked toward the circus, a huge dog stepped out of the shadows. “Imagine a wolf, but much thicker and heavier,” he says. “I remember there was this hot dog on the floor, covered in ketchup and American mustard, and this dog just gulped it down in one go and carried on walking toward me. I was like, ‘Oh no. What am I doing?’” Thankfully, a voice called out from the dark as the dog walked circles around him – it was the daughter of the Bulgarian family who owned and ran the circus. “Don’t mind Star,” she called. “He’s harmless.” Minutes later, Perry was in her caravan drinking a cup of tea, and he was immediately made to feel at home. Star, meanwhile, took a seat on Perry’s lap, and his furry face would become the opening image in Smoke Filled Mirror.

The photographer’s first stint with the circus lasted two weeks, but he’d link up with it again several times over the next two years, as it toured the north of England and Scotland. It was like entering into “one big family” he says, hailing from a melting pot of cultures across South and Central America, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Kyrgyzstan, and elsewhere. Each was an essential part of the circus itself, he adds. “It was like a big living animal that needs a lot of care in order for it to work.” As seen in Perry’s photographs, performers doubled as cooks, repairmen, and mechanics. “The guys on the trapeze were flying through the air at night, like a crystal chandelier or some mythical creature, and the next day they were cooking everyone’s sausages and eggs on the barbecue.”

Perry, who grew up in Colne and Burnley in “the antithesis of a London lifestyle”, moved to London after college to work as a photographer’s assistant, and eventually started to get his own work. For a few years, he got pulled in by the fast-paced, competitive process of carving out a career in the capital. Then Covid hit. “I was at home a lot, and me and my girlfriend broke up, so I was left in this place where I started to really reflect on things,” he explains. “I was feeling as if I wasn’t in charge of where things were going. I was just being pulled down the river, and in that river you get hit with rapids, and little bits and pieces of yourself fall by the wayside.”

This realisation took Perry down two, intertwined paths. On the one hand, he was drawn to the shamanic wisdom he still practices today, based on “slowing down and listening to yourself, listening to your gut, and your heart… that mind inside your body”. On the other, he built a shed at the bottom of his garden with his dad and rented out his house, using his newfound freedom to travel around in his van. That’s how he ended up in Morecambe, at the circus, which offered a distantly-familiar counterpoint to his hectic London life.

[At the circus] everything’s metal and canvas and fire… I could taste home, I could almost smell bits of my childhood, my history – Keiran Perry

Growing up as part of a big and “pretty skint” family up north, life was chaotic in its own way, Perry admits. “But everyone just banded together.” Even when Gary fell through the ceiling in a bathtub: “It was funny, and there was a lot of camaraderie.” The circus was the same. “Everything’s broken and in a constant state of needing fixing. Everything’s metal and canvas and fire, quite harsh and rustic,” he says. “I could taste home, I could almost smell bits of my childhood, my history. I found that really enriching. It made me use that mind inside my body, rather than being in my head.”

Often, Perry didn’t even take pictures. He’d just hang out, hand out fliers, and help the circus workers put seats together. “I probably got in the way a couple of times,” he laughs. “And they work so hard. To be clear, it’s a brutally hard graft, but that’s what makes them resilient, and binds them together.” When he did take his camera out, he saw it more as a tool for connection than anything else, a way to start a conversation and open the door to new friendships. For Perry, this is what it’s all about: entering into a community, being open to their way of life, and prioritising a real experience over snapping the perfect photograph. 

In the end, of course, the intimacy of the photographer’s relationships shines through in the images themselves, whether they show motorbikes riding rings around the ‘Globe of Death’, or several generations of Ukrainian refugees sharing a tender moment in their caravan. At the circus, he says, he felt “this incredible, safe environment of sharing and love. Those moments… you can’t choreograph that. You have to be a part of it, not be apart from it.”

This sense of authenticity in Smoke Filled Mirror also comes from a place of loving what you do and tapping into that intuitive “mind inside your body”, Perry suggests. For him, this came via his time with the circus: “I was expanding out into the world, especially post-pandemic, but it was just as much an inward journey too. It made me really present, and really alive, not so much in my head.”

As a result of this experience, Perry realised that there are basically two paths in life for a young photographer. “Both lead nowhere… you could imagine a place, but it will never be that.” Even so, the path you take to “nowhere” is important. “Don’t get caught up in the mind, its internal judgement, because that will lead you down the wrong path,” he says. “But there’s another way that’s full of heart, it’s full of adventure.” How do you find it? “It’s about tuning into yourself, listening to that quiet voice in the back of the mind.”

“You don’t need to be somebody else. That’s your gift. You can do you better than anyone else can.”

Keiran Perry’s Smoke Filled Mirror is now available via New Dimension, in collaboration with Pendle Press. The book is edited by Sherif Dhaimish, with art direction and design by Alex Currie, and creative direction by Ben Goulder.

The accompanying exhibition opens at Village in Manchester on 17 January 2025, with an opening event and book signing from 6pm-9pm, and runs until February 16.⁣⁣