well-done, but pricey

book: Los Toros

books:


	• Los Toros Twin Palms Publishers, 2007 - 200 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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The Essence of Los Toros - in a book

The book is a large a collection of images with an introductory essay from acclaimed author Peruvian, Mario Vargas Llosa.
Crouser has made the photographs from 150 bullfights in Spain, South America, France and Mexico. A large number of images to choose from and it shows. Careful editing has distilled the collection down to a series of depth and insight that could never be achieved from just one or two visits.
It tells the story of the corrida through the highs and lows of the day with passion and depth. The photographic style Crouser uses here evolves from a photojournalistic background. Individual images are often tightly cropped extracts of action and emotion, and he uses his considerable skill at anticipating and framing essential moments. Insights gone in a blink and a tourist would miss even from the front row (or maybe would turn away from) but an old, seasoned ticket holder would notice and might wish they could save to experience again are preserved to exploit the innate superiorities a book has over other media, perfectly.
Crouser alludes briefly to the moral politics of the bullfight in his short essay at the end saying, "I don't believe any real aficionado goes to a corrida to see bull's blood or bull's pain, but goes instead to see that day's matadors paint what they can with the unpredictable and deadly medium of that day's bulls.". I've rated this book as I have because I believe he has conveyed the essence of this quote beautifully.

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well-done, but pricey

For your $60, you get about 10 pages of bilingual text and 123 sepia-tone photographs: in a 200-page book, this means that about a third of the pages are blank. The photos are artistic, and capture much of the spectacle, the drama, and the death that is part of the bullfight. Unlike in some books, the matadors are identified: some of the matadors are at the top of the profession, others are not.

A major part of a bullfight is the sense of emotion that can be conveyed: the top matadors are usually best at this. But some of the top matadors are left out of this book. You can have photographs of a dozen different matadors all doing what is essentially the same pass, and some of the photos might show a great sense of emotion, and other photos may show that this same emotion is not present. Emotion and drama can also be fickle: a matador may like one bull and dislike another, and the emotion can be very different. What I would have liked to see in this book would be a series of photographs of a dozen top matadors, all performing, say, a derechazo, to illustrate the differences in drama and danger. But it's still a fine book, and worthwhile for the enthusiast.

For some other reading and viewing:
Toros: The Crossed Lives of Man and Bull by Vidal and Masats. A fine book of color photos of the bullfight.
In the Presence of Death: Antonio Ordonez by Shay Oag. A fine mixture of text and photos, concentrating on Antonio Ordonez, who was featured in Hemingway's Dangerous Summer.
Death and the Sun by Edward Lewine (text). About Francisco Rivera Ordonez, whose great-grandfather, grandfather (Antonio Ordonez), and father (fatally gored in the ring) were all top matadors.
Bullfight DVDs: these can be worthwhile companions to books such as Crouser's. Most show complete corridas, and most are in Spanish, but even for someone not fluent in Spanish you can get a great sense of the spectacle and emotion. Look for Feb. 5th, 2005, at the Plaza Mexico--one of the greatest corridas. www.torosfilms.com and dalbo9 and lasaves on ebay are good sources,

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Over the course of sixteen years, Michael Crouser visited the bullrings of Spain, Mexico, Ecuador and France, capturing the dark spectacle of the bullfights and the passions of the crowds who follow them. Select images from a mutitude of bullfights have been sequenced to create a singular, compelling fight ina narrative form. The book features an introduction in English and Spanish by renowned Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, recounting the childhood memories of his first corrida de toros, while also reflecting upon his personal philosophy on the contemporary bullfight. "Courage, nonetheless, is not truly the heart and soul of bullfighting. Its very center may well be fear. Fear - the most human of emotions - the matador must keep in check, channel, gradually overcome and forget as his knowledge and his art progressively dominate his antagonist and subject him to his will, to his game and to his spell, until he succeeds in creating the illusion that all danger has evaporated, that what began as a challenge of blood and death has become a dance, ceremony, sculpture, theater, ritual."

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