Ramón Masats Spanish, 17/03/1931–4/03/2024

A whitewashed wall with a bull's head mounted on it: black, curly-haired, horns curving up and out, the muzzle pushed forward off a shield-shaped plaque. Below it and slightly to the right a man stands in a dark suit and tie with heavy spectacles, head tilted back, looking up at the animal, something rolled under his arm. At the bottom of the frame an embroidered floral cloth is draped over something out of view. A whitewashed arch closes the right side.

The bull is dead and mounted and still has the better position. It is higher, larger and much darker, and the whitewash behind it is clean enough that the head reads as a cut-out laid on the wall. The man has to put his head back to see it properly. Whatever he came here to look at, he is now standing in the posture of somebody being looked at.

This was made at a tourism fair, which accounts for the arch, the whitewash and the embroidered cloth: Spain arranged for visitors, with the two things most reliably sold as Spain set out on a wall. Masats came out of a generation that photographed the country's official self-image with perfect politeness and no respect at all. Nothing here is mocked. A man in a good suit is standing under a stuffed head, and the photograph lets the arrangement speak.