Giffords Circus’s show is touring the UK. Established in 2000, Giffords Circus is a small circus company that delivers circus / theatre fusion to the villages and market towns of the south west. It combines dance, comedy, horses and live music in a two-hour show, located on village greens in a small white tent surrounded by handmade burgundy and gold showman’s wagons. Photographer Tom Pilston goes behind the scenes to meet the performers. Here: The incredible, gravity-defying Konjowoch Troupe. (Photo by Tom Pilston/The Guardian)

Photographer and former dancer Jesús Chapa-Malacara, head of art production company fotosjcm, announces the launch of Esprit de Corps, an innovative book of ballet photography unlike any seen before. The high-end art book, currently being independently financed and offered exclusively through a Kickstarter campaign, will feature world-class dancers from top ballet companies, including Michaela DePrince of Dutch National Ballet, Jared Matthews and Yuriko Kajiya of American Ballet Theatre, among others.

“The Guinness World Records has consistently listed Sherlock Holmes as the “most portrayed movie character” with 75 actors playing the part in over 211 films. Holmes' first screen appearance was in the Mutoscope film Sherlock Holmes Baffled in 1900, albeit in a barely-recognisable form”. – Wikipedia

Photo: William Gillette as the lead in a stage production of “Sherlock Holmes”, at the Lyceum Theatre. Playwright: William Gillette, Arthur Conan Doyle (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 9th September 1901

“Romain de Tirtoff (23 November 1892 – 21 April 1990) was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté, the French pronunciation of his initials, R.T. He was a diversely talented 20th-century artist and designer who flourished in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor”. – Wikipedia. Photo: Romain de Tirtoff (Erte) – “Symphony In Black” (please click to enlarge).

To produce the images that convey his fatalistic and ironic approach to life, tinged with hope, he needed the environment and knowledge of Mother Russia, oiled with a bit of bribery to certain circus trainers. Enter the Great Russian Bear, the personification of Russia for the last several centuries, onto center stage and into his studio. The bear is recognized as both brutish and cute – Misha was the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games – and has remained a symbol of Russia since Tsarist times. In 2009 it is the symbol of the United Russia Party.

British artist Nick Veasey used an X-ray machine to show us exactly what's going on under people's clothes. The equipment took copies of items separately before they were mashed together to create characters and situations. The work is part of Veasey's latest exhibition named “X-ray Voyeurism”. In order to create the work, the 51-year-old has spent the last 20 years exposing himself to harmful radiation in his studio. Photo: “Stripper”: Has tucked her cash away safely. (Photo by Nick Veasey/Barcroft Media)

“Douglas Fisher has worked in the photographic industry for more than 25 years, starting out at 19 as an assistant before establishing his own studio, just two years later. Here, Douglas would go on to be among the first to champion the emerging worlds of digital photography and CGI, identifying early the transformative impact they would bring to advertising and high end photography”. – Tim Mitchell

Photo: «Carlsberg Launch». (Photo by Douglas Fisher)