Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Published on the occasion of the exhibition organized by Fundación MAPFRE, this catalogue traces the breadth of Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s practice across nearly eight decades.

Álvarez Bravo began photographing in the late 1920s, at a moment when Mexico was redefining itself after the Revolution. His work grew alongside that transformation. Streets of Mexico City, fragments of the body, vernacular architecture, found objects, gestures caught in passing. The images resist folklore and spectacle. They are precise, often quiet, sometimes edged with irony.

The selection of approximately 150 photographs focuses on recurring motifs in his work: reflections and illusions within the modern city, forms that shift between figure and abstraction, objects carrying an ambiguous charge. His photography moves between documentary attention and a restrained, surreal current rooted in everyday life.

Time is central to his language. The catalogue places still photographs in dialogue with experimental film work from the 1960s and includes late colour images and Polaroids. Seen together, they show an artist who continued to refine his vision without yielding to fashion or cliché.

With essays by Gerardo Mosquera, Iván de la Nuez and Catherine David, this volume offers a considered overview of one of the defining figures of twentieth-century Latin American photography.

• AUTHOR: Laura Gonzalez Flores / Gerardo Mosquera / Roberto Tejada / Alvaro Vazquez Mantecon
• TITLE: Manuel Alvarez Bravo
• PUBLISHER: FUNDACION MAPFRE
• YEAR: 2012
• COVER: Hardcover
• PAGES: 285
• DIMENSIONS: 31 x 3.5 x 25 cm
• LANGUAGE: English
• ISBN: 978-84-9844-396-7
• CONDITION: Excellent