Stanelli Super Circus by Luke Stephenson

Luke Stephenson is a London based photographer, graduating from Blackpool College in 2005, he has since been working freelance. His work has been presented and published in such magazines as Wallpaper, Dazed and Confused, The New York Times and Vice.

Shown here is a project he recently did called Stanelli Super Circus, which involves various different puppets.

“The Circus puppet pictures came about when I visited the Upfront gallery where the puppets are housed, near Penrith, quite close to my parents, house. They put on puppet shows at Christmas, Easter and during the summer and I went with a friend and his niece to watch one of these shows and they had all these amazing puppets in a glass cabinet. When I asked about them I was told a wonderful story of a man named Stan Parker who sadly died in 2004, he was from Carlisle and all his life he made Marionette puppets and was quite famous among puppet aficionados and performed his shows around the world. After his death his collection of puppets was sold and split up but John Parkinson of the Upfront gallery applied for lottery funding and managed to acquire over 100 of Stans puppets keeping them together. I loved this story and found the puppets beautiful and odd. The largest set of puppets were the Super Circus set and I wanted to document them and was lucky enough to be able to spend a day photographing Stanellis Super Circus.” – Luke Stephenson

Portfolio – http://www.lukestephenson.com

Interview with Luke Stephenson – http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/2629-luke-stephenson

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