Retratos de la Corrida, Bull boy, Juarez – 2002
I’m a little weary of border politics, for now.
I return to the streets and hope the disorder of life gives me shape and form.
Politics and News seem to work on a linear arc.
Facts. Information. Plenty to tell. Endless detail and weight and nuance. Narrative is interesting but one of the things I’ve always liked about doing photography is the occasional punch in the gut you get from just being somewhere (often where you shouldn’t be).
Photography can work as a fact machine, but when it doesn’t and it’s just image, impression, reaction, light, when there is more than the sum of the parts, I like it the most.
For me, the more you lay it out the less mystery there is. That’s what information is, right? Removing the mystery? Dissolving the obscure.
That’s what a good photojournalist does. Sometimes I am one.
But the facts of the feel of a thing can not come, for me, riding on that linear arc. It has to come in a crazy loop de loop. By accident. Unexpectedly. Deliriously.
I have a need for mystery, disorder, unanswered questions, room between spaces that can’t be resolved.
I have a need for what I can not know.
Every once in a while there is a gift of a photo that delivers that.
I crave disorder and I try to fix it, and don’t, and can’t. There are moments, fragments, debris chipped off of chunks of reality, little sharp slivers that just are: accidental, unsolvable, compact. This was such a moment for me.
Sometimes I want to know nothing and just get slapped.
Bull. Boy. Blood. Flash. Pop. Punch.
Some photos say: I exist therefore I am. Don’t ask. Hello. Wake up.
The world is not its surface.
This photo is from a series, Retratos de la Corrida (portraits from the bull fights), which is an ongoing project from the 1980’s to the present.
I hope it socks you good.
1 Comment
Facts. Information. Plenty to tell. Endless detail and weight and nuance. Narrative is interesting but one of the things I’ve always liked about doing photography is the occasional punch in the gut you get from just being somewhere (often where you shouldn’t be).
photos are fact machines, and they are lie machines all at once. they show what’s there, and they don’t. they are as much about what is just outside the frame, and who is holding the camera, as they are about what makes it onto the negative, the print, or the blog.
this one leaves me wondering who the boy is, what his name is, what he calls himself. is he just a bull boy, or does he come from somewhere? where was he before this, and where did he go?
i have been wandering around your site; interesting work. i have lived in san diego all my life–well MOST of it–and the whole US/Mexico border has been this massive presence the entire time. less so for me, of course, since im an American and can cross whenever I please. but there is still a massive presence…