(Note: "Álvarez Bravo" is a two-part surname, and the beginning "A" properly has an acute accent)

born: 1902 Mexico City, Mexico
died: 2002 Mexico City, Mexico (natural causes)

With a career that spanned over seventy years, Manuel Alvarez Bravo was a photography pioneer. He is considered the most significant of 20th-Century Latin American photographers and one of the great Mexican artists. His subject matter included folk art, nudes, burial rituals and decorations, and occasional social commentary. His best-known works are the beautiful "Good Reputation, Sleeping" from 1939, which was intended as the cover for a surrealist exhibition catalog, and the disturbing "Striking Worker Murdered" from 1934.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo Biography

Manuel Alvarez Bravo was born February 4, 1902 in Mexico City. He attended Catholic school from 1908 to 1914. In 1915, at 13 years old, his father died, and he left school to help support his family. He worked in a textile factory, and later at the Finance Ministry. He studied literature and arts at night school.

He met Hugo Brehme, a German photographer 1923. Soon after, he bought his first camera, and began to learn photography. His father and grandfather were both amateur photographers. In 1925, he married Dolores Martinez de Anda, who was to become a respected photographer in her own right, as Lola Alvarez Bravo, although they were to separate in 1934. Also in 1925, he won a first prize at a local photography competition in Oaxaca. In 1927 he met Tina Modotti, who introduced him to the thriving arts scene in post-revolutionary Mexico City, and to artists such as Edward Weston, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco. He received important encouragement from Edward Weston after sending Weston some of his photos in 1929.

He began his career as a professional working for the journal Mexican Folkways in 1928. He replaced Tina Modotti at the magazine when she was forced to leave the country, due to her pro-communist views. This job allowed him to travel and photograph all over Mexico.

In 1935, Alvarez Bravo participated in a groundbreaking photography exhibit with Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. Also in the 1930s, he taught photography at the San Carlos Academy. Between 1943 and 1959, he worked as a photographer in the Mexican film industry. After 1959, he began working as an art book photographer for the Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana, staying with the Fondo until 1980.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City acquired its first Alvarez Bravo photos in 1942. Then some of his photos were shown in Edward Steichen's Family of Man exhibit in 1955. In spite of this exposure, Alvarez Bravo's work remained obscure in the US until his 1971 exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. Some have called this his "rediscovery."

During his life, he participated in 150 individual exhibitions and over 200 collective exhibitions. Shortly before his death, in 2002 he attended a celebration of his 100th birthday at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo died on October 19, 2002, of natural causes.