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Photos by Arthur Rothstein, February 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Arthur Rothstein: Death in Matamoros
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Photos by Arthur Rothstein, February 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
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6 comments:
Tom,
Ah, a return to the black & white world:
A picador
A picador
Capework
Capework
Placing the sword for the kill
The death of the bull
the end
9.2
light coming into sky above black plane
of ridge, silver of planet above branch
in foreground, wave sounding in channel
concept of distance physical
distance, straight line
somewhat displaced, relative
conditions, measurement
cloudless blue sky reflected in channel,
whiteness of gull flapping toward ridge
These are remarkable and unspeakable.
In
the black & white world
things do tend to seem absolute... whereas of course in the living world, absolutes exist only in the mind of the beholder... and then too, there are differences in human traditions and cultures, and one naturally hesitates to judge these things... BUT given all that (and also our acute sense of alienation and disembodiment in a technological world), recognizing "truths" as (in Stephen's words)
somewhat displaced, relative [to]
conditions,
still it's difficult, looking closely -- especially at that bottom photo, in which we recognize that the Matamoros bullfight crowds were made up largely of gringos coming over from Brownsville -- not to conclude that this spectacle of physical cruelty, captured with such clinical precision by Arthur Rothstein, is, as Curtis suggests, simply
remarkable and unspeakable.
Has it been established
that running with the bulls
at Pamplona...is not necessarily
machismo in the senses of poetry.
Bull fighting for fighter is
obviously a skill, perhaps an
art,for the crowd, animal
sacrifice.
Can't ignore Hemingway
and the sense of him
at Key West. Spain a little
different, but then, in the
Spanish Civil War a great
human sacrifice.
Fire setting, bedwetting,
and cruelty to animals in childhood
are predictors of violence in
adulthood, offering a small thought
indirectly about historical
culture and unspeakable violence
just across our southern border
it's the triad of fire setting,
bed wetting, and cruelty to
animals that's predictive of
violence...not for example bed wetting alone which is common
Elmo,
I wish one had to cross a border to find violence.
There are times it feels like where we live...
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