Faces of the Fair

The Geauga County Fair was a virtual kaleidoscope of people in an ever changing  scene of faces, characters and personalities. I wandered about the fairgrounds on a bleak, rainy afternoon on Labor Day weekend.  The fair was a total sensory overload for me. Thought I might spend an hour, but my visit stretched into nearly four. Met many interesting people along the way. My emphasis was people that were actually working at the fair rather than visitors. I was fascinated by how many people it took just to operate an event on this scale. I met vendors, maintenance people, public safety crews, carnies, and on and on. I was amazed to see kids handling 2,000 pound farm animals like it was nothing.  Many people agreed to pose for portraits. These informal sessions were conducted on the spot and in a matter of minutes or even seconds. They are wonderfully flawed, often with cluttered backgrounds and bystanders and passers by in the background. This used to frustrate me but I have come to recognize that it adds to the immediacy and spontaneous quality of this genre of photography. These portraits truly reflect slices of actual life, exactly as I encountered them. I chose to process this series entirely in black and white to avoid the distraction that color sometimes brings and instead focus the eye on the people.