Take a step into Circus Magazines world of unbridled creativity.
Founded by beauty photographer Jackson Bowley, CIRCUS Magazine is a bold, bright, chaotic, stressful, sickly, loud, scrappy and stupid beauty publication that creates and celebrates the absurd.
As a self-described “beauty” photographer based in London, Bowley found himself disillusioned by so much of the industry he worked within. So much so that he conceived of a publication that would act as the ultimate antidote.
Circus is an exploration of the outrageous, the ridiculous, and the obscene.
Curated by Bowley from contributions made by a range of artists from various corners of the fashion and editorial industries, the magazine is physically cumbersome and ungainly, composed of 20 A1-sized (roughly 23.5”x33”) folded-up posters so that the magazine is purposefully awkward to leaf through. New Zealand designer Roydon Misseldine created the CIRCUS logo and magazine layout.
In this second issue, Jackson assembles a raft of creative misfits to riff on tried-and-tested beauty tropes and turn industry norms on their head. The result is a stunning journey through the minds of photographer Sasha Chaika, creative director Alexis Stone amongst others.
Despite his aversion to themes, Jackson and Circus’ lead graphic designer Roydon Misseldine have created a watertight visual style. An unglamorous grab bag of seemingly user-generated content, each image more enthralling than the last. The loose theme of “impossible” does an admirable job of tying the images together (a testament to Jackson’s curatorial finesse) but each submission takes up heaps of conceptual space on its own.
