ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Lisbon. Campo Pequeno. A moment during a Portuguese bullfight. Most Portuguese bullfights are held in two phases: the spectacle of the cavaleiro, and the pega. In the cavaleiro, a horseman on a Portuguese Lusitano horse (specially trained for the show) fights the bull from horseback. The purpose of this part is to stab three or four bandeiras (small javelins) into the back of the bull.
In the second stage, called the pega (“holding”), the forcados, a group of eight men, challenge the bull directly and without weapon of defence or protection. The front man provokes the bull into a charge to perform a pega de cara or pega de caras (“face grab”). The front man secures the animal's head and is quickly helped by his fellows who surround and secure the animal until the animal is subdued.
The killing of the bull does not take place in front of the public; eventually, a professional butcher kills the animal after the show, but it can happen that, after an exceptional performance, the bulls are healed, released to pasture and used for breeding until they die.

AUTHOR
Tommaso Rada is an Italian photographer currently living in the north of Portugal, in Braga. His works has been published in several magazines and newspapers such as Financial Time, Der Spiegel, Monocle, Popoli, Popoli e Missioni, Private online edition, Expresso, Helsingin Sanomat, Courrier International, Le Pelerin and Forbes Brazil. He collaborated with Unicef Mozambique, Comunità di Sant’Egidio and Habitat for Humanity Portugal.
In 2012 he won the first prize of the Environmental category of the Estação Imagem contest, the most important photojournalism Portuguese contest, with his reportage “The Last Forest” on deforestation in Mozambique. In 2013 he was finalist in the AddRetouch documentary photography contest and he was selected for the Encontros de Imagens – Emerging photographers prize. In 2014 he won the second place in the contemporary issues of the Portuguese contest Estação Imagem, he has been selected as finalist of Beca Autores Noveles 2014 and he was finalist of the international award Revela and of the Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography Grant.

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