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Entertainment for all ages who queue up and sufficiently leave the real world behind. No one cares if the fare is outrageously overpriced. I shouldn’t say, “no one cares,” but rather care for economic ambition is suspended for a day. Besides, the day’s outing should last one a few weeks.

The images were made at three fairs in the Pacific Northwest of the United States—that is Portland, Oregon; Ridgefield, Washington; and Puyallup Washington. Nothing but the scenery was staged. The images document anticipatory moments of trust, vulnerability, dread, and fun woven in a collective performance of make-believe.

People arrive in such a way, doing all the right and necessary things, to have fun. The goings-on are chaotic but well structured. People gaze up at the mechanical stages, choose one they can brave, and patiently await their turns to embark on an alternate reality. And I meander while methodically plucking moments from a collective performance of the masses. The lines I see are sharp, unforgiving, and manufactured. 

As I am intermingled with the fairgoers, I fill in the outline of a memory of Yvonne’s Twining Humber’s Spoiled Carnival. In the painting, the fairgoers were at the same annual fair in Puyallup, WA. The painter of all-American scenes has rendered the fairgoers at a distance. Nevertheless, the  hilarity of the fairgoers’ movements are evident as they seek shelter from impending storm clouds. The fairgoers are depicted as characters in a plot twist. I have gone back in time to the same fair, imbued with the same tradition, strewn with the same characters—but now, serendipity prevails with sunny skies.

The fairgrounds are an imagined space. Spiel, confectionary, rides, and music. It is all a ruse. The fairgoers are lulled into being actors in a cleverly designed narrative. The lies are a good thing. They transform the fairgrounds into a somewhere, an elsewhere, a nowhere, or an everywhere. But in momentary flashes, the faces in the images reveal truth from pure violent joy.