Biographie

Manuel Álvarez Bravo: Photographs
A leading Mexican photographer (1902-2002), whose works will now be exhibited in the Czech Republic for the first time, thanks to an exhibition organized by Langhans Gallery Prague together with the Embassy of Mexico.

Álvarez Bravo was born in Mexico City and grew up there. In that city, pre-Columbian culture and the culture of colonial Mexico are wedded with contemporary culture. Bravo was at first self-taught and was encouraged to develop his talent both when he won a competition in Oaxaca in 1925 and, above all, by friends such as Tina Modotti and Edward Weston. Bravo's work was influenced by other photographers too, for example, Paul Strand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Eugène Atget, and the wellspring of his work, traditional Mexican imagination, was expanded with elements adopted from modern European art - chiefly Surrealism and Cubism. Like other artists of the cultural renaissance that came in the wake of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20, Bravo emphasized the past of the indigenous peoples of his country. He created a poetic vision of Mexican life, its cultural diversity, and social conflicts.

The chief subject matter of his photographs is nudes, traditional customs (mainly funeral rites and objects related to the theme of death), and scenes from the working-class milieu. He documented murals by Mexican painters such as Diego Rivera, and, from the end of the 1930s, taught photography at the Academy in San Carlos. He contributed photographs to Mexican Folkways, a periodical devoted to the cultural history of Mexico, and worked with film directors such as Eisenstein and Buñuel. Álvarez Bravo lived to be a hundred years old.