Manuel Alvarez Bravo – Biography of Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Often cited as the most famous Mexican photographer, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, whose life spanned most of the 20th century relentlessly, captured the story of the evolving social and geopolitical atmosphere of his country.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo He was born in Mexico City on February 4, 1902. His father was a teacher, very interested in painting, photography and writing; he also produced plays; his grandfather was a professional portrait painter. Both influenced little Manuel from an early age.

Alvarez Bravo He grew up in the historic center of Mexico City behind the Cathedral, in one of the many old colonial buildings converted into apartments for the lower classes. He was eight years old when the Mexican Revolution broke out, which years later would have an effect on his photography.

From 1908 to 1914 Alvarez Bravo He attended elementary school at the Patricio Saénz boarding school in Tlalpan, but had to drop out of school at the age of twelve when his father died. He worked as a clerk in a French textile factory for a time, and later in the Mexican Treasury Department. He studied accounting at a night school, but then switched to art classes at the Academia de San Carlos.

Alvarez Bravo he met Hugo Brehme in 1923 and bought his first camera in 1924. He began to experiment with it, with some advice from Brehme and subscriptions to photography magazines. In 1927, he met photographer Tina Modotti, whom he admired for her work in magazines such as Forma and Mexican Folkways. Tina introduced him to a number of Mexico City intellectuals and artists, including photographer Edward Weston, who encouraged him to continue the craft.

During his lifetime, Alvarez Bravo he was married three times, all of them to female photographers by right. His first wife was Lola Alvarez Bravo, whom he married in 1925, just as he was beginning his career as a freelance photographer. He taught her the trade although she did not reach the fame of Manuel. They had a son, Manuel, and separated in 1934. His second wife was Doris Heyden and his third, the French photographer Colette Alvarez-Urbajtel.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo He died on October 19, 2002, when he had already reached 100 years of age.

His work

After the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, the career of Alvarez Bravo It emerged during the creative renaissance that was the reaction to the paradigm shift in the political environment. Along with the great uprisings against the then president of Mexico, Porfirio Díaz, led by political revolutionaries, such as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, important artists also emerged, such as Diego Rivera. The work of Alvarez Bravo, during this period, is identified as “gradual abandonment of a country of rural life and traditional customs, towards the emergence of a post-revolutionary culture with international influences and the adoption of a modern culture related to the urban maelstrom“.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the career of Alvarez Bravo it is its breadth of approaches, which runs through modernity. People, things and objects, for example, a sheep fallen against a sidewalk are shown in real habitats, but captured in a perspective that elevates the purpose and meaning of the photograph, beyond mere documentation.

Although it is considered part of the surrealist movement, the images of Alvarez Bravo they are not exclusively surreal in their meaning; his lens captured the mysterious and mythical qualities of things that tangibly existed, such as an optician’s shop plastered with illustrations of the eyes, as seen in the “Optical parable“, which evokes the work of the pure surrealists.

The race of Alvarez Bravo It can easily be seen as a story of tireless work filled with painstaking attempts and experimentation leading devoted to iconic masterpieces.