Thursday 2 September 2010

Arthur Rothstein: Death in Matamoros


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Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Bullfight, Matamoros, Mexico

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

A picador

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

A picador

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film


Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film


Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film


Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Capework

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Capework

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Placing the sword for the kill

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

Death of the bull

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film

the end

Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film


Image, Source: digital file from intermediary roll film


Photos by Arthur Rothstein, February 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

6 comments:

  1. 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

    ReplyDelete
  2. These are remarkable and unspeakable.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 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.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 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

    ReplyDelete
  5. 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

    ReplyDelete
  6. Elmo,

    I wish one had to cross a border to find violence.

    There are times it feels like where we live...

    ReplyDelete