Independent Press Award
2024 winner
Don't Miss This: A Decade of Eccentric Performing Arts Photography
Jim R Moore
Don’t Miss This: A Decade of Eccentric Performing Arts Photography is Jim R. Moore’s pictorial paean to the stars of today’s circus, sideshow, burlesque, and new vaudeville scenes. In these 282 pages you will find the world’s most eccentric extended family: clowns, acrobats, thespians, musicians, contortionists, jugglers, puppeteers, ventriloquists, daredevils, aerialists, opera singers, drag stars, monologists, impresarios, magicians, impressionists, fire-eaters, nuts, and acts of the sort we still don’t have any polite name for. Taken between 2010 and 2020, the book captures such latter day performing giants as Lawrence Pisoni (founder of the legendary Pickle Family Circus), Circus Amok’s “Woman with a Beard” Jennifer Miller, bouffon artist Red Bastard, drag king Murray Hill, sideshow star Todd Robbins, Tom Murrin (a.k.a. The Alien Comic), Avner the Eccentric, burlesque queens like Julie Atlas Muz and the Wau Wau Sisters, and performance artists like Penny Arcade and Reno. In addition, inside you will also find essays by the likes of John Towsen (author of the seminal book Clowns), and performance artists Paul Zaloom, Pat Olesko, and Michael Smith.