BULLFIGHT
In 1997, using her grandfather’s Kiev camera with his handwritten exposure instructions on the back, Lena Herzog shot her first roll of film during a bullfight at the Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla, in Spain. Over the next five years, she returned to the arena to photograph the intense drama of the epic battles, enraged bulls, matadors preparing for and during fights, and entranced, ecstatic crowds. The series explores the psychological underpinnings of ritual participation and historical ceremony. A book of this work, Tauromaquia, was published in 2002, and is an homage to the masterful, early 19-century bullfighting engravings of Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, which ignited Herzog’s imagination as a small girl.
Bullfight is one part of Herzog’s trilogy on epiphanies of Spain.
