The Making Of - P&Co x Circus Extreme

A Nod to the History of the Circus

When searching for inspiration for our BF shoot, we stumbled across a number of wet plate portraits of Victorian circus acts and fell in love with the format. Wet plate photography seems to capture more than its subject- it captures character, depth & soul. It was one thing for us to show the excitement of each act, but also the people and the stories behind them. We knew we had to feature wet plate photography in our campaign. Enter Dave Shrimpton, a Wet Plate Photographer that Lee had followed for a while and Portrait of Britain winner. Dave brought a rare mastery to the old-school technique that is and met the assignment better than we could have ever imagined.

His portraits didn’t just document the performers, they told their stories, capturing every line, shadow, and nuance with haunting beauty. A huge thanks to Dave for bringing this historic art form to our modern campaign, and for being one of the most knowledgeable and fascinating collaborators we’ve had the pleasure to work with. We could have listened to him talk about his craft all day long.