Christopher Crawford

I caught sight of this family walking through the Johnny Appleseed Festival in Fort Wayne, Indiana last year and had to get a photograph of that man with his baby grandson hanging on his chest.

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This photograph was made last year at the Three Rivers Festival carnival at Headwaters Park in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This trailer housed a carnival game at the Three Rivers Festival at Headwaters Park in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I found the suggestion that we trust Jesus funny, given that carnival games are a somewhat shady business. If Jesus was there, He would probably be the only one you could trust. This game returned to the Three Rivers Festival in 2010.

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I always walk around the Three Rivers Festival every year and photograph the people and carnival rides. The festival is held every summer in July in Headwaters Park in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. This year I live downtown right around the corner from the park so I got to spend a lot of time there. Here’s a photograph of a ride called the Fire Ball.

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This is another of my photographs from my time in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This ride was photographed at a carnival that was set up in the parking lot of the Santa Fe Place Mall. They had carnivals there a few times each summer. I stayed a few minutes after the midway closed and made some photographs of the rides after the lights went off.

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Mary was a worker at the carnival during the Fiesta de Santa Fe 2006, working the basketball game. She carried her tiny dog, wrapped up like a baby, at all times. The little dog was sick and she was caring for it while she worked. I made several photos of her and promised her a set of prints. I never heard from her after that, despite giving her my business card so she could call me with an address to send the photos to.

The next summer another carnival was in town during the Rodeo de Santa Fe, and Mary was there again, this time without her dog. The dog had died a short time after I photographed her, and Mary was glad to see me again. She’d lost my business card and hoped to run into me again when she came back to Santa Fe in the summer of 2007 for the Rodeo. I made her a set prints the day after I saw her again and took them to her before the carnival left town. She cried when she saw them, the last photographs that were taken of her baby.

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When I was a kid first getting into photography, someone gave me a stack of Popular Photography magazines that were a couple months old at the time. This was in the mid 80’s when I was about 11-12 years old. One of them had, on the cover, a photo of a carnival ride called The Zipper. It was shot at night, with the ride in motion, using a long time exposure so that the lit-up sign was sharp and the ride formed a round blur of light behind the sign. I thought that was the coolest picture I’d ever seen. All the years after that I never saw a real Zipper ride, until I went to Santa Fe. The zipper has come to town a couple times with different carnival companies. These photographs were the first I took of the Zipper, and are from the carnival at the Rodeo de Santa Fe 2007 back in June.

This was made as the sun was setting and a storm was approaching. It began to rain soon after I made this exposure.

This was done a little earlier than the first photograph in the post before it got too dark.

This is my favorite. The lit up ride in the dark glows beautifully and the little boy waiting his turn to ride is so excited! This was made the day after the first two were made.

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Here’s a few more from the carnival held during the Rodeo de Santa Fe back in June. The first two were shot at night, my favorite time to photograph carnivals. I love the motion in the Tilt-A-Whirl and the forelorn look of the nearly abandoned game booths at night. Few people played the games or rode the rides due to the unconcionably high prices charged. Most of the rides cost $4 per person per ride!

The Tilt-A-Whirl Ride

The Goofy Golf Game

The Roll-A-Ball Game. Notice the little kid pushing a stroller on the right edge of the image?

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This is the ticket booth at the Rodeo de Santa Fe Carnival just after closing time.

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This photo booth was itself photographed during the carnival at the Rodeo de Santa Fe 2007. I just redesigned the section of my website where I had photographs from the annual Fiesta in Santa Fe to include all of the carnival photographs that I had scattered through my website. This photo was made back in June and I have many more from the Rodeo carnival to add soon!

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