"We were all very moved by the experience," Cohen says. "It was like a rock 'n' roll show afterwards, the way they were swarming you. It was clear that there was no one else going there, that they had never had anyone do a show for them."
Among the juggling pins, the tricycle, the sponge balls, and the jars of bubble solution in Cohen's airy artist's loft are visual reminders of his worldwide travels. These unframed black-and-white photographs hang in every room of the apartment, in which he lives alone. Next to his kitchen table, for example, there's a picture of some children he met while performing at a school in Kosovo, staring seriously into the camera. A boy in the bottom corner holds a toy gun in one hand and picks his nose with the other.
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Cohen has taken hundreds of photographs over the years, and he has converted a small storage space into a darkroom. Near his desk, he keeps a portfolio of some of his favorites. Looking through them, he stops at one that he refers to as "the hands," taken after a performance at the Bhutanese refugee camp. As the bus was departing, Cohen decided he wanted to get one more picture, and stuck his head out the bus window. The 300 children who had come to see him off exploded, many of them sticking their hands up to wave goodbye. In the photo, there are dozens of palms in the air, interspersed with grinning young faces.
He took most of these photos just after Clowns Without Borders shows, and they often feature kids with twinkling eyes; they're snapshots of honest, unadulterated joy. But Cohen also takes pictures that reveal the reality of life in these places, when the clowns aren't there. There's one of a Mexican boy -- probably no older than 8 -- wearing a cap, a suit, and a red foam nose, leaning wearily against a wall. Cohen caught him "in an off moment," taking a break from the juggling act he performs for drivers at red lights to earn a few pesos.
Almost painfully, Cohen recalls performing in Nepal, and having the Bhutanese refugees ask him to take a picture of a man who had had both of his arms cut off when he was tortured in Bhutan. "They said, 'Please, take a picture of this,'" Cohen says. ""People need to see this.'" The picture is not included in the portfolio.
He thumbs through a few more photos: a grinning Bhutanese girl standing behind barbed wire, wearing a dress made from donated bolts of cloth; a group of jostling kids in Chiapas; a boy riding his bike through a bombed-out 600-year-old town in Kosovo.
"Clowns Without Borders is a very rich experience," Cohen says. "It's wonderful to create laughter in any environment, especially in an environment that so clearly appreciates it, and where it is needed. It changes your perspective in general. You pay more attention to what is going on, and you're more appreciative of what you have. We are so fortunate. It's easy to get isolated in this country in your world of wonder and not know what is going on elsewhere."
He returns to the photo of the hands from the Bhutanese camps. "They see you and they scream, "Payasos!' They're so happy that you have come to perform," he says. "I had just stuck my head out the bus window because I wanted to take one more picture. And they just erupted. You sense the need, and you wish you could do more."
