Beginning in the mid eighties photographer Ronald T. Simon of Montreal began a decades long project of photo documenting the pageant, and in 1995, began designing a series of miniature photo books using his photography which have been published the Bread & Puppet press. Each booklet is devoted to the theme of one of the annual Pageants, and their miniature size creates a stark and exquisite contrast to the scale of the pageants which took place across several acres of Vermont farm-country landscape.
Wings-- Cardboard winged and masked puppeteers fly over the pages and the landscape. From the 1994 pageant Karl Marx Nativity.
Chairs-- From the 1995 Bread & Puppet Pageant, photographs of scenes from the pageant with dozens of performers holding 2-dimensional painted cutouts of chairs.
Remi’s Wall-- For many years in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Remi Paillard mounted a wall of large Peter Schumann paintings in the field where the circus and pageants were performed. This book’s photographs document the wall Remi built in 1991.
Bodies-- Scenes from the 1997 Bread & Puppet pageant depicting crowds of performers carrying life sized paper mâché body puppets.
M.O.V.E. Passion-- In 1997 Bread & Puppet commemorated with a “passion play” the police bombing of the MOVE organization’s home and headquarters in Philadelphia in 1985, which killed 6 adults and 5 children, and burned down an entire block of homes. Simon’s photograph’s document the performance.
Gates of Hell-- Photographs from the 1998 Bread & Puppet pageant depicting paper mâché reliefs of masses of bodies. Those relief puppets are entitled, The Gates of Hell.
O Calf-- From the final Our Domestic Resurrection Circus pageant in 1998, with text from Bertold Brecht’s Hitler Choral III.
Two Chickens In Love-- Photographs of a 1999 “Ding Dong”, or a small sideshow performed on the circus fields before the start of the circus, entitled Two Chickens In Love.
Uncle Fatsos-- In 1968 the Bread & Puppet character Uncle Fatso was created and named by a group of children at a workshop in the Harlem neighborhood in NYC. Since then, many “Uncle Fatso’s” have been built, representing the “Fat Cat” imperialist, capitalist overlords of the day. Simon captures a number of them in B&P circuses over the years.
Alone We Are Weak, Together We Are Strong-- Photographs from various Bread & Puppet’s Our Domestic Resurrection Circuses, 1987-1997.
Rehearsing with Gods-- Pages themed by Simon: Hope, Beast, Human, World… Photographs from Bread & Puppet pageants from 1987-2001.
The Possibilitarians-- This book breaks from the rest of the series as the photographs are of a show performed in Montreal in 2012, and at the Bread & Puppet Our Domestic Resurrection Circuses in Glover, VT. The photographs show crowd scenes with performers holding cardboard figures painted by Peter Schumann.
Ronald T. Simon. Miniature Photo Book Set of 12. Glover, VT: Bread & Puppet Press, 1995-2012. 10-14pp@; 3" x 5.5"; pbk; staple bound; b&w; offset printed; edition unknown.
