title: Raging Bull

(see the full-size close-up below)

As most now know, the fighting bulls of Spain are specially bred for their bravery and their ferocity. Living on large remote ranches, they never see a man on foot; he is always on a horse. This is done so that he learns to associate man and horse as one animal. Only in the bull ring does he finally meet man on foot.

The ideal fighting bull charges straight and true as though he is on railroad tracks. One in a hundred may do this. The others are erratic and unpredictable. In the ring they learn quickly. Matadors try to learn their peculiarities even quicker. They try to read these in the first few moments the animal is in the arena. Like prize fighters a bull may favor hooking with his right, rather than his left horn. He may not focus on the cape so that he can be led past the bullfighter; he may be distracted by the noise of the crowd. He may charge wildly and dangerously. These things a matador must know to survive his encounter with these sharp-horned killers and he has mere minutes to learn them.

As usual, I photographed this bull from the stands using a 35mm camera and standard lens. The high contrast film was processed to provide only black and white images. To add to the furor of this animal’s charge, I exposed the print briefly to light, finger-painted the swirls with developer, then, went quickly into the fixer with it. This is called "solarizing" a print. It can produce a third-dimensional image. In this case it created a swirling abstract of the raging bull as I saw him that sunny Sunday afternoon at Ventas, the bull ring in Madrid. This poster-sized print reflects all the drama of that moment.

This is a close-up image from the full-size print, showing the detail involved