Be in character: The hard everyday life of Vietnamese circus performers

The world's first circus opened in London in 1777. Since then, the circus has become a universal phenomenon, and there is no country in the world where it would not be.

Photographer Christian Rodriguez, currently living in Barcelona, carefully documents the life of the Hanoi circus.

Do you remember the stories about sad clowns? It's like this there. Behind a bright, laughing and attractive picture from somewhere from childhood hides extreme poverty and fear of the future. All this is seasoned with the hardest physical labor.

The upside-down people in many of Rodriguez's photographs are upside-down lives.

While working on the project, the photographer lived with Vietnamese circus performers for quite a long time, and he knows what he is talking about: "They live in an old theater, and their lives are completely destroyed."

Circus performers try to hide the difficulties of their lives, they are embarrassed by them. Many of them have iPhones and iPads, but they simply can't afford to rent a decent, and at least some kind of housing."

In the photos, I tried to focus on ordinary life, take them very close and, perhaps, touch on some intimate aspects of life, show the other side of the circus."

Vietnamese circus performers live very poorly even by local standards.

Last year, Christian Rodriguez flew to this country with 130 euros in his pocket. That was enough to live there for three months.

The heroes of Rodriguez's photos do not have this money either. So all these lights, colors, clothes and other circus paraphernalia are nothing more than a way of life that they want to live.

As the photographer summarizes: "They want to live in a dream. But they can't."