Faces at the NC State Fair
This is an excerpt from Scott Fitzgerald’s book, A Night at the Fair:
Once again the fair–but differing from the fair of the afternoon as a girl in the daytime differs from her radiant presentation of herself at night. The substance of the cardboard booths and plaster palaces was gone, the forms remained. Outlined in lights, these forms suggested things more mysterious and entrancing than themselves, and the people strolling along the network of little Broadways shared this quality, as their pale faces singly and in clusters broke the half darkness.
We’ve been having these Fairs for a very long time. Â I really don’t think they’ve changed much and that’s a good thing.
I’d like to thank everyone who was gracious enough to have their picture taken. Â These were all taken with old film cameras and it can take a few moments to get everything ready.
As a kid I had a closet piled full of huge stuffed animals I had won at the fair. Â Some of these games are such classics that they’ll never go out of style.
Nothing beats a giant slide!
This guy was singing Elvis songs. Â He was pretty good, too.
Someone needs to open a restaurant that sells “Fair foods”. Â I’ll keep them open.
He was happy to give directions. Â He had been doing this all night.
10/29/2010
some of these are absolutely superb. Great moments/ scenes captured.
11/02/2010
Amazing. Looks like Lomo photography. Seriously, these are amazing and really capture one of the last standing “real” cultural pastimes left round these parts. Heck, I even moved from NC to Missouri for nearly a decade looking for raw, real, and authentic. I look at these and think… “Even though our world is being ruined by globalism, by VPs that move from one corporate encampment, from China to Singapore to Rio – to the next, and outsourcing their souls… our family will always keep it real by making it to the NC State Fair and by sticking to our guns here in Raleigh”.
06/02/2011
Hi. Two of the picutres above are of my parents (the man clipping the cow and the one below it of the woman moving hay). I was wondering if there was any way that I could get copies of these photos? Thank you, and you have fantastic photography skills.