Two deaths close to each other at the end of July - those of veteran matadors Paco Camino and Pepe Luis Vázquez Silva - brought back memories for many aficionados, including myself.

When Paco Camino, having topped the novillero escalafón, took the alternativa in 1960, he was already regarded as someone who would be a major force in toreo for years ahead. I saw him six times from 1968 to 1976, initially in San Sebastián’s El Chofre arena and latterly in Salamanca. That first year (which was also my first year watching corridas in Spain), I wrote that Camino was “very much in control of his opponents, but always with a look of sheer terror on his face”; I reckoned he lost the trophies from his first bull with poor swordwork. The subsequent 11 lidias I saw from the Sevillian maestro were all disappointing, either because of the poor quality of his bulls (Atanasio Fernández, Baltasar Ibán, Antonio Pérez de San Fernando) or because of his lack of effort with the animals at his disposal. Particularly memorable in the latter regard were his 1971 performances at San Sebastián alongside Antonio Ordóñez. Camino’s stated aim was to be better than Ordóñez, and they formed a pareja that season, but seemed to compete with each other solely in terms of who could be the most cynical, their lidias usually ending in broncas. Ordóñez did the decent thing and retired from toreo following his second San Sebastián afternoon, but Camino continued and, indeed, went on in subsequent years to achieve notable successes in Barcelona, Sevilla, Madrid and in Mexico, where he was the most revered Spanish matador in between Manolete and José Tomás.

I didn’t have a particularly good camera for most of that period, and my transparency photographs were very much budget-limited, so I only have one blurry but half-decent photo of Paco Camino toreando, giving a verónica to a bull of Baltasar Ibán. For me, in this shot (despite its imperfections), Paco conveys the calmness, control and gracefulness that I always hoped to see from one of the key toreros of that time - and, some say, one of the best ever.

I have a larger number of photos of Pepe Luis Vázquez hijo in action although I saw him on fewer occasions than I did Paco Camino - just four times in all. He broke through as a novillero in 1979 and, the following season, formed part of a corrida mixta with matador Curro Romero and the young rejoneador João Moura that formed part of every major feria - these contracts were believed to have made Pepe Luis a millionaire before he took the alternativa! I saw him in Salamanca that year and was unimpressed, describing Pepe Luis as “a young man who appeared to have seriously lost his way”.

However, when I next saw him, at Huelva six years later, my opinion of him took a complete about-turn. With his second Hermanos Sampedro bull that day, Pepe Luis was simply phenomenal - controlled, relaxed, his capework and muletazos imbued with an astonishing naturalness and sevillano grace. By now, he had a reputation as a fragile, inconsistent torero, more often than not disappointing, but, for the first time, I understood how aficionados could follow such toreros, the elation of seeing them on their good days being worth the disappointments of their other afternoons. Indeed, 12 days later I saw him at El Puerto de Santa María and recorded that, “he was the complete opposite of the torero I’d seen at Huelva. [With his first bull] … he was totally lacking in confidence with cape or muleta and went on to botch the kill.”

No matter, the spell had been cast. If I’d had more money and spare time in those days, I would have made efforts to see him more often, but I was pleased to witness him perform once more when he was brought in to a Sevilla Feria de Abril as a substitute. To this day, the photo that, to me, captures the magic and beauty of his performance that Huelva afternoon is one of a delicate, sweeping pase ayudado por bajo.

Pepe Luis’s appearances grew rarer and rarer as the years went by (although he was a teacher at Sevilla’s escuela taurina) until he was persuaded by Morante de la Puebla to make a limited number of appearances in 2017, his afternoons at Illescas and Granada being particularly memorable.

Two great toreros - one a figura, the other an artista, and one I was fortunate enough to see torear magnificently: the other, unfortunately, not - have left this world.