‘Tijuana Sunday’ Studies Brutality of the Bullfight : Photography: The book assails romanticizing of the spectacle. ‘It is blatant torture,’ renowned photographer says.

Leigh Wiener wants his photographs to make people rethink their values. In his new book, “Tijuana Sunday,” Wiener conveys his thoughts about bullfighting with a series of photographs shot through an 800-millimeter lens on a warm Sunday afternoon in 1961.

“You spend 23 minutes torturing the animal and when he hasn’t the ability to defend himself you kill it and then parade around with the ears and tail and call that courage,” Wiener said. “You have people who are dumb enough to accept that.”

Wiener’s photographs, from his recently published book, will be on exhibit until March 31 at Rizzoli International Bookstore and Gallery in Costa Mesa.

Wiener takes a close-up look at the catharsis of emotion that takes place in a bullring. The series was something of a departure for the Los Angeles-based free-lance photographer, who is better known for his images of celebrities including Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, George Burns, Jack Benny, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

The 60-year-old photographer is well versed in photography, publishing and television. He has produced seven books and, in the early 1980s, hosted a television show on photography called “Talk About Pictures.”

After being introduced to photography in a grade-school science class, Wiener made his first sale at age 9, when a local newspaper ran his photos of the U.S. Open tennis tournament near his home in Forest Hills, N.Y.

He was only 14 when he landed his first magazine assignment, in which Collier’s asked him to shoot Hollywood agent Charles Feldman. By this time, his family had moved to Los Angeles.

After his graduation from high school, he worked as a staff photographer for The Times for seven years, then moved on to free-lance for ABC television as well as Time, Look and Life magazines.

It was Life that gave him the bullfighting assignment after he had shot a feature for that publication on a rodeo in Montana.

Initially, he declined because he objected to bullfighting on moral grounds. But when the editors told him he could shoot it from his point of view, he agreed to take the assignment.

He hired an assistant, bought a stopwatch and went to Tijuana. All the assistant had to do was record the time whenever Wiener clicked the shutter. The images shot for the book were made during the last fight of the day.

Even though Wiener felt his effort was a success, his work went unpublished. Life didn’t run it after all, Wiener said, because bullfighting was quite popular at the time and the editors were afraid of negative reader response.

“A bullfighter (who recently saw the book) called me to say, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen an honest story on bullfighting,’ ” Wiener said.

“I think good photographers should use their ability to move people toward a better life. I’m not a wild, animal-rights person. I’m not in favor of fur coats, but I certainly think animals should be used in medical experimentation.

“A reasonable number of animals can be used (for experimentation) with discretion, but what really turns me off is this asinine belief that to entertain bored dull people we (need to) kill living things.”

Wiener criticizes the romanticizing of bullfighting and objects to myths about courage expounded by writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Barnaby Conrad (author of “Matador” in 1952).

“It is blatant torture,” Wiener said. “There is a picture in the book of the bull trying to get out of the arena, climbing the wall of the grandstand. He’s not going after any spectators--he’s trying to escape the pain.”

For his next effort, Wiener will again try to take a different perspective in a photographic study of a familiar subject: Marilyn Monroe.

“Not how she died,” Wiener said. “But the emptiness of the life she led. It will be a book on her funeral. It was the only kind of ending Hollywood could give a star: totally empty.”

“Tijuana Sunday,” black-and-white photographs by Leigh Wiener, will be on display until March 31 at Rizzoli International Bookstore and Gallery at South Coast Plaza, 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa. Hours are: Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. For more information call: (714) 957-3331.