02/07/2026
Circus Love'
— The Magical Life of Europe's Family Circuses —
📷 Stephanie Gengotti
"We are all tightrope walkers in precarious equilibrium on a thin wire, almost imperceptible. Only in the disorder called Love, any stunt is possible."
— Fabio Stassi, Charlot's Last Dance
It started as an assignment. It became a love story that has lasted years.
In 2016 I was sent to photograph a small circus travelling around Europe on horse-drawn caravans. What I found wasn't the traditional gypsy circus of my imagination — it was something out of time, poetic, romantic. A coup de foudre. I packed my bags and never really came back.
Since then, Circus Love has grown into six chapters — six families, six countries, six ways of living outside the lines. I didn't want to just photograph them. I wanted to become part of them: cooking, doing the dishes, looking after the kids, sharing the tiny space of a caravan where nothing stays unsaid and everything is resolved before the curtain rises.
What I found inside those caravans was something I didn't know I was looking for — a sense of family, of trust, of slowness. In a world run by algorithms and screens, these nomadic artists still build everything with their hands, still believe in dreams enough to live inside them.
The circus is freedom and hardship in the same breath. It's a metaphor for life — and for me, it became a way home.
