Forte da Casa, Portugal, May 20, 2000

Twice weekly between March and September, throughout Portugal, young men fight a bull using only their bodies as weapons. Known as los forcados, their task is to subdue the bull after its fight with the matador. Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra has created a series of large-scale, spare, psychologically rich portraits of these men. By focusing carefully on her subject, excluding background details, Dijkstra emphasizes the individual, capturing visual details that illuminate subtle emotional states. In the present work, the young boy is portrayed soon after the bull fight with fresh blood still on his face. Dijkstra’s work combines formal classicism with brooding psychological intensity. Standing against a white background with his arms at his sides, the boy looks diligent, calm and curious. He wears a Portuguese uniform typically worn on the occasion of bull fights, thus embodying a wider social history; his demeanour suggests exhaustion, yet he holds his pose with a mixture of pride and obedience. This series of works has been exhibited in the artist’s major retrospectives at San Francisco's MOMA and at the Guggenheim in New York in 2012.