Circus Comes to Town

This series is a collaboration with my twin sister Sara and the song she wrote “Circus Comes to Town.” She is in all of the images accept for two of the images: the Legs and Climbing Up Image. This started out as a shoot for the cover shot for her album, “Circus Comes to Town.” I fell in love with the imagery of the words to this song and wanted to create a series that coupled the words and music. We ran out of time shooting before she had to go back home to California so I was not able to complere all of images with her as the subject. Luckily being twins, I filled in.

“I came up with the idea of this song when I was touring solo in England. It was 5 months before my partner died, hindsight, I feel like my body knew something was wrong. I was playing really great shows opening up for big acts, yet all day long, everyday and throughout my performance I felt like I just wanted to cry and cry. I couldn’t tell my tour manager because on the emotional level he just wouldn’t have gotten it. I drank my way through the tour just hanging on, funny enough this was also a happy time in my life, careerwise. But having to be up and smiley and entertaining was difficult. You don’t get to call in sick at my job when you are an emotional mess but you’re supposed to act like everything is okay. I felt like in my mind a circus was going on, an unpleasant one.

A year after my partner died I started writing the song. It’s about extreme depression, grief, abuse, mental and verbal abuse, feeling alone, feeling mentally unstable. At the same time having hope.”
-Sara Petite.