Manuel Alvarez Bravo1997
by Susan Kismaric
Manuel Alvarez Bravo has been the most significant single force in Mexican photography and one of the twentieth century's great Mexican artists, as well as an artist of international acclaim, yet the story of his contribution to the medium of photography has not previously been told in terms of his long and deep artistic development.
Alvarez Bravo has produced a body of photographs of exceptional quality throughout his lengthy career: early pictorialist work and other experiments, formal abstractions, images allied to international surrealism, and mature work of many kinds - portraits, urban and rural views, religious and vernacular subject, landscapes, and nudes - all unified in their originality, poetry, and insistence on human dignity.
His profound affection for his country and its...