Manuel Alverez Bravo
Manuel Alverez Bravo made his mark as a master of modern photography and is considered a major artist of Mexico whose career spanned more than 80 years. He was born in 1902, into a family of artists who shared their great love of painting and music with him. He studied at the famous Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes and received his first camera in 1923. This interest in photography started when he briefly borrowed a camera from a neighbor when in his teens when he worked as an office clerk between his studies. He started his professional career in 1925 with works that leaned to towards surrealism and drawing his inspiration from many of the great artists and photographers of that time. It was not until 1928, that he gave up his office job to purse photography as a profession.
Manuel Alverez Bravo’s work, was based on the political climate of Mexico in the post revolutionary period that existed, along with Mexico’s religious and social traditions. He was fortunate to meet many of the great artists and photographers due to the upsurge of the avant-garde movement in Mexico spurred on by the cultural exchange of some of the international artists and celebrities who visited and lived there. The departure from the more traditional style of photograph, as expressed in his work seemed to display the social contradictions and inequalities of the time translated into a form of surrealism and cubism giving his work a timeless quality.
Another influential photographer of the time, Tina Modotti was a great influence on the young Bravo. She encouraged his greatly, and introduced Brave to Diego Rivera, one of Mexico’s great artists who in turn introduced him to many others locally and abroad. Manuel Alverez Bravo was fortunate enough to meet contemporaries Paul Strand with whom his worked briefly, and then Heni Cartier-Bresson in 1934 with whom he became great comrades in the artistic sense. With an almost mythological approach to photographing inorganic objects his influence as a photographic artist gained ground. There is a remarkable similarity between his work and that of Clarence John Laughlin, the almost seemed to influence each other. Even though his photographs often depicted political undertones, it never overwhelmed his work, still creating surreal dreamlike photographs of life in Mexico.
Manuel Alverez Bravo’s course diverted somewhat, and as he moved into the burgeoning Mexican film industry between 1943 and 1959 while he taught photography at the Film Institute in Mexico City where he taught in a rather unorthodox manner, not focusing on the technical aspect of photography.
Just before his death, Mexico honored and celebrated his life as a national treasure for his 100th birthday and for the special place he held in the history of modern photography. His work left its mark on the Latin American artistic community, as well as being influential and renown in the global sense and Manuel Alverez Bravo was a source of inspiration for many aspiring young art photographers.
Manuel Alverez Bravo had been married three times, firstly to his Mexican sweetheart a photographic contemporary, then later to an American writer and journalist, with his third wife being a prominent French photographer.
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