Michael Crouser made the photographs in Los Toros over sixteen years, visiting the bullrings of Spain, Mexico, Ecuador, and France. The book was published by Twin Palms Publishers in September 2007. According to the publisher, Crouser captured the dark spectacle of the bullfights and the passions of the crowds who follow them. Images from many bullfights are arranged to create a singular, compelling fight in narrative form, bringing events photographed over time into a single constructed encounter.

The publisher describes the photographs as dark in temperament and attentive to the crowd as much as to the matador. The sequencing turns repetition and ritual into a composed drama. The book measures 9 by 11 inches and contains 180 pages with 130 four-color plates. The physical volume provides a sustained setting for this movement between spectacle and spectators.

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian author, wrote the introduction, which appears in English and Spanish. The publisher states that it recounts his childhood memories of his first corrida de toros and his personal philosophy on the contemporary bullfight. His account gives fear a central place in the performance, considering how the matador manages danger and creates an appearance of control. This literary perspective accompanies Crouser’s visual treatment without replacing it.

Los Toros combines an American photographer’s long engagement with an Iberian and Latin American subject and an introductory essay by a novelist. The publisher presents the book as a narrative sequence, and its interest lies in how that argument is made: through order, recurrence, and the building of tension across 130 plates.