Book Kennison’s fantastic photo essay of the Midnight Circus

Book Kennison is a pretty phenomenal juggler who has been working on and off with Chicago’s Midnight Circus since he was 14 years old.  Here’s a video of his act on the Midnight Circus from a couple of years ago.

And here’s a home video of Book and a friend of his playing some incredible volleys of chair badminton while listening to classical music.  This video is 15 minutes long, and while a little repetitive and with not the best camera work, it’s oddly satisfying.

But it turns out that Book has another skill as well. He is a wonderful and thoughtful photographer.

He recently published some of his photos on the site Circus Talk.  The photos are backstage shots of this year’s tour of the Midnight Circus.

You can see a couple of the shots above, but it is really worth checking out the essay online and reading all of his insightful comments.  He talks about how he frames each shot, the artistic restrictions he places on his photography (he works only in black and white, and he shoots his subjects only with an Iphone), and how he is able to capture the moment.

See all of the photos and read his essay:

Circus Life, Between Cues: A Photo Essay of Chicago’s Midnight Circus

You can find out very little more about Book Kennison on his website http://bookkennison.com. 

Strangely for an artist, his website has almost no information about him whatsoever, other than how to contact him.  (and that he was born in 1989)

His website does have some great photos of him, but if I didn’t know who he was, I’m not sure that I’d want to hire him based on his website.  It’s slightly intriguing to have no information, but is it intriguing enough?  Well, he doesn’t seem to be hurting for work, so maybe.  I couldn’t find any biographical stuff about him online, either. The longest bio I could find of him was on the Circus Talk page.