Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Yancey Richardson is pleased to announce Manuel Álvarez Bravo, featuring a selection of iconic photographs by the legendary Mexican artist and coinciding with RAGE™, the gallery’s exhibition of new work by Tania Franco Klein. Considered one of the most important photographers in the history of the medium, Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902-2002) is regarded as a towering figure both in Mexico and in the history of Modernism in Latin America more broadly. With photographs that range from nudes, still lifes and quiet street scenes to portraits and records of political violence, Álvarez Bravo used photography to explore the subtle mysteries laying just beneath the surface of the perceptible. Initially self-taught, Álvarez Bravo’s photography developed through his study of foreign and local photography journals, where he first encountered the work of Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, both of whom came to Mexico in 1923. Modotti became a close colleague and supporter of Álvarez Bravo, introducing him to the artists of Mexico’s avant-garde, including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Mexico was a cultural hub for many in the international avant-garde in these years, such as André Breton, who included Álvarez Bravo in the Paris exhibition Mexique in 1939 and then the Exposition of Surrealism in 1940 in Mexico City. Although Álvarez Bravo downplayed the relationship of his work to Surrealism (his work also appeared in the Surrealist magazine Minotaure), the association has endured to this day.

The photographs in the exhibition explore the way Álvarez Bravo transformed scenes of quiet and solitude into powerful forms of metaphor and suggestion. In La Buena Fama Durmiendo (Good Reputation Sleeping) and El Sonador (The Dreamer), subjects are shown lost in slumber, while in El ensueño (The Daydream) a young woman is caught up in the transportive act of daydreaming. Each of these figures are etched into their specific material settings while at the same time they are led elsewhere by their imagination and Álvarez Bravo’s framing and treatment of light. In other images, such as Retrato de lo Eterno (Portrait of the Eternal) and Los agachandos (The Crouched Ones), Álvarez Bravo uses light and deep shadow to completely alter otherwise commonplace moments, showing how the photographic image can introduce a mode of perception that not only expands our understanding of the world, but also complicates—even unsettles—the presumption of its familiarity. Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902-2002) was one of the founders of modern photography on an international level and is regarded as the leading representative of twentieth-century Latin American photography. During his life, Álvarez Bravo presented more than 150 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 200 collective exhibitions.