On Tue, 22 Oct 2002, *-CHILLED DELIRIUM-* wrote:
Photography has lost one of its poet laureates this week.
Mr. Bravo was born in 1902, and lived most of his life, in the barrio
called Coyaucan, that part of Mexico city where the temples had once been,
near the Cathedral. He grew up in a family where creativity and hard work
was prized: His grandfather was a portrait painter, his father a
schoolteacher who worked his day job, plus long hours painting,
photographing and writing.
Pancho Villa's Revolution began when he was eight years old, and ended
when he was eighteen. It was a major event during his formative years,
one that would shape his life and that of Mexico's until today. Needless
to say, he was a Villista. Mexico would remain in a state of turmoil
for decades. It still is.
He wrote how he was not like his childhood friends, for on Sundays, he
would spend the day between the Museum of Anthropology and History (Pre-
Spanish), and The Museum of San Carlos (European Art).
There was no money for extended schooling, and he joined the work force
as a young man, spending long hours after that day job
at the Academia San Carlos, studying literature, painting and music. This
would be the most formal education he would ever have. It was a
conservative art academy. He received his first camera as a gift when he
was thirteen.
These were heady days in Mexico, and artists shouldered a lot of social
responsibility. People like Orozco. Siqueiros, Kahlo, Rivera, Modotti and
many others were in the thick of the turmoil of the times.
A friend and follower of Frida Kahlo,the photographer Hugo
Brehme, helped tutor Manuel Alvarez Bravo and with buying his first
camera in 1923. At this time, he was working as a bureaucrat for the
Dept. of Power and Transportation, as an assistant to a dept. head, who
subscribed to photo magazines, and passed them on. Bravo won his first
photo-contest in 1925. In 1927, he met Tina Modotti, that extraordinary
artist, organizer, propagandist, documentarian and one of the great Muses
of the day, perhaps of all days. At her urging, Bravo sent a portfolio
to Edward Weston, who offered encouragement.
This is something difficult to understand, but back then, artists
didn't just hang in bars and cafes. They went to where people
were struggling, some to fight against repression, others to document
it, some just to be there (where they hung in bars and cafes !).
They came to Mexico. Weston, Strand, Cartier-Bresson, Hemingway, Breton,
Langston Hughes and many others, all of whom crossed paths with Bravo
during the 1930's and spoke highly of him and his work, specially
Cartier-Bresson.
In 1930, Tina Modotti, along with many others, was declared persona
non grata and expelled from her Mexico. In kindness, loyalty and
solidarity, she left Mr. Bravo her job at Mexican Folkways Magazine, and
her camera. This enabled him to photograph full-time, and he got to
document festivals, archaeology, people and folkways. Three years later,
he was contributing editor.
By the end of that decade he had come into his own as an artist,
producing many of his best known images. I could go on with his many
accomplishments, by 1943, he had his first show at MOMA, there was a
Guggenheim, he put together Mexico's largest and finest photo
collection, curated shows, etc. But there are the images...
Mr. Bravo had his facets as an artist. He was well-acquainted with
his indigenous culture. He so loved the people of his country, always
the populist, and his photographs show it. He cherished and held onto
the magic of the Pre-Columbian and its fusion with Catholic mysticism.
He was a citizen of the world, too, with ties to the best European
artists of the time.
I was in Chicago this summer, and had the privilege of going to the
Art Institute, rushing past a roomful of Irving Penns to see a small
retrospective show of Mr. Bravo's works in the small side gallery.
There was the Parabola Optica (Optical Parable), a brilliant, very
conceptual photograph of an optometrist's storefront, reversed, with many
framed eyes all over. Los Agachados (the crouched), of workmen at a
cantina, hunched over their drinks. Retrato de lo Eterno (Portrait of
the Eternal), an ethereal, archetypal long-haired woman preens her hair
profiled, looking into a hand-held mirror in a slice of light, much like
you are looking at her. She is everywoman, and she is Guinevere and
Goddess, too. How unlike El ensueno (The Daydream), where a young girl
leans on a rail, bored and drifting into dreams. All his photographs
were kind, the titles gently humorous at times, and the mystery thick as
coagulating blood. The prints never grandstand technically, and are
wholly subservient to the image. For me, these were the works of a
magical humanist, one who had humbly learned to appreciate the world,
from the most brutal, sordid reality to moments of sublime revelation.
He leaves behind a rich legacy for us all. Manuel Alvarez Bravo also
passed the magic on to others, most notably his assistant, Graciela
Iturbide, who has developed into one of the premier women photographers
of our time.
--- Luis
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