First of all I was very excited about going back to Camden and Primrose Hill. I haven't been there since before summer when I used to live in that area. The exhibition contains a lot of different things from different artists, like Sir Peter Blake and Walter Potter and collectors like Arthur Windley. It's mainly about entertainment from the 19th century; posters for fairgrounds, stuffed animals, puppets and images of 'freaks' (woman with beard, dwarfs, tall people, fat people etc) who toured around as circus attractions. It was a lot of things in there but you couldn't take any photos inside (penalty=death).
What I found most interesting was probably the photos and posters of the 'freaks'. It's very strange that they were an attraction in those days just because of their looks. These days that would definitely not be ok. The exhibition was interesting but after a while I felt like it was a bit too much weird stuff at the same time.
Check out the BBC video from the mini fairground collector Arthur Windley.
Top image from Taxidermy Articles and bottom image from Wikipedia.
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