CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/6/2018

"Once you’ve stood on the edge of the abyss, it doesn’t matter how you got there." Rineke Dijkstra: The Louisiana Book

This 1994 portrait of a Portuguese bullfighter is reproduced from Rineke Dijkstra: The Louisiana Book, the beautiful new retrospective catalogue collecting all of the influential Dutch photographer’s most iconic portrait series. Oversized and exquisitely printed on luxe paper, this 328-page door-stopper is literally mesmerizing. “In their lesser-known Portuguese style of bullfighting, the bull is not killed but pressed to the ground by a team of men,” Hans den Hartog Jager writes. “One of the men is responsible for jumping straight onto the front of the bull—but this role is not assigned until the last minute. Only then does the front man hear that he will soon almost literally be staring danger and death in the eyes. It was these front men that Dijkstra chose to portray, just after they had left the arena. Strikingly, they show almost the same emotions as [new] mothers: a mixture of pride, relief, and exhaustion. The very different source of those emotions seems to make no difference for the picture. Once you’ve stood on the edge of the abyss, it doesn’t matter how you got there.”