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In this moment I felt conflicted; I didn\u2019t come to this event to see a bull die. It was against my very nature to want to see something like this. However, I also knew that as a journalist it\u2019s not my job to decide what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s not my right to go to a country I\u2019ve never been to before, with a language I don\u2019t speak, with customs I don\u2019t understand and say that what they\u2019re doing is wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photographing the bull as it\u2019s dying, blood leaking from its mouth, its eyes starting to fade away, was the most important thing I could do in that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I put the camera to my eye, I thought of a photograph I had studied in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On July 22, 1975, in Boston, Massachusetts, 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter were on a fire escape during an apartment fire, waiting for firefighters to rescue them. But the platform they were on broke and the two of them fell to the ground. Bryant died; her goddaughter survived. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A few feet away, Stanley Forman, a photographer for the Boston Herald American,<\/em> was shooting the entire incident. He took a series of heartbreaking photographs,<\/a> capturing the two bodies as they fell through the air. The photographs sparked a lot of outrage, and the press was charged with invasion of privacy. However, the photographs led to change; within 24 hours, the city of Boston altered its policies on the regulation and maintenance of fire escapes and other cities around the U.S. also passed new legislation, inspired by Forman\u2019s photographs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I looked at the bull through my viewfinder, lying there, its life slowly leaving its body, I realized the power we photographers have in capturing death as well as life. Whether or not I support the practice of corrida, it\u2019s my job to photograph this and show it to the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a personal reflection and does not necessarily express the opinion of The Arles Project or program sponsors ieiMedia or Arles<\/em> \u00e0<\/em> la<\/em> carte<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Story and photos by Sam Guzman When I heard there was going to be a bullfighting event at a ranch on the outskirts of Arles, I jumped at the opportunity to photograph it. I had been to rodeos before, but I\u2019d never attended a bullfight. \u201cLa Corrida\u201d is a centuries-old tradition for the people of Spain … Continue reading Watching death through a lens<\/span> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/projects.ieimedia.com\/2023arles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/GUZMANessayphoto-3-1024x683.jpg\")