El Cordobés

Lucien Clergue made most of his photographs—principally nudes, portraits of artists, landscapes, and images of bull-fighting—close to his native home of Arles. Like his friend and mentor Pablo Picasso, Clergue had long been fascinated by the rituals of bullfighting, which combined grace and art with violence and danger. He began photographing the great bullfighter and Spanish popular hero known as El Cordobés in 1963, soon publishing a book that showcased the matador’s theatrical style. In 1970 Hugh Edwards acquired six of Clergue’s photographs, and that summer he mounted an exhibition on the artist. This photograph, taken from a ground-level position that emphasizes the bull’s seeming anguish over the man’s exertions, was showcased on the exhibition’s printed announcement.