Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Manuel Alvarez Bravo was born in 1902, in Mexico City. He received a daguerreotype camera in 1915 as a gift, and began experimenting with the basics of photography at home using his mother's kitchen pots and pans. Within a decade of buying his first modern camera in 1924, he had won regional photo competitions, begun to teach photography, exhibited in group shows with Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and Dorothea Lange, had his first solo exhibition and met Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. His pace has never abated and, since then, his work has been exhibited around the world and is in the collection of nearly every major museum. Bravo passed away at the age of 100 in 2002.

ACTIVE BACKLIST

MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO: EYES IN HIS EYES
Introduction by Rose Shoshana. Text by Guillermo Sheridan. Translated by Lorna Fox.
D.A.P/ ROSEGALLERY, LOS ANGELES
ISBN: 9781933045603 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Active | Awaiting stock

MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO
Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
APERTURE
ISBN: 9780893817428 | US $12.50
Pub Date: 6/15/2005
Active | Not available

MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO: POLAROIDS
Essay by Colete Alvarez Urbajtel.
EDITORIAL RM
ISBN: 9789685208376 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 6/15/2005
Active | Awaiting stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO
Essay by Susan Kismaric. Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry.
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK
ISBN: 9780870701337 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 7/2/2002
Out of print | Not available

MANUEL ALVAREZ BRAVO: NUDES
Edited by Ariadne Kimberly Huque. Introduction by Carlos Fuentes.
D.A.P./DISTRIBUTED ART PUBLISHERS, INC.
ISBN: 9781891024351 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 1/2/2002
Out of print | Not available

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Eyes in His Eyes

Introduction by Rose Shoshana. Text by Guillermo Sheridan. Translated by Lorna Fox.
Published by D.A.P/ RoseGallery, Los Angeles

Frida Kahlo leans against a concrete wall, looking somberly down while an ankle-length skirt flutters around her. Elsewhere, the tight screws of plough blades stack interlocked on a warehouse floor, utilitarian subjects coalescing into a heady abstract pattern. From his first days as a photographer--with the backing of such greats as Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, Paul Strand and Henri Cartier-Bresson--Manuel Alvarez Bravo worked over a wide range of styles and subject matter--formalist abstraction, architecture, interiors, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits--with a consistent focus on the landscape and social geography of Mexico. In his concise vision of his homeland, it was both a real and symbolic landscape populated with subjects detained in dream world tableaux of desire, solitude, candor and foreboding. Eyes in His Eyes reintroduces some of the artist's overlooked masterpieces, and reveals, for the first time, a broad selection of never-before-seen images from his private archives. In his 80-year career, Alvarez Bravo printed, published and exhibited only a thousand images. This portfolio, culled with the help of the artist himself, and completed after his death, is full of unfamiliar abstractions, portraits, landscapes and street photography. It provides an invaluable re-entry into the visual poetry of one of Mexico's most gifted artists and a Modern master of photography.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Masters of Photography Series

Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
Published by Aperture

Manuel Alvarez Bravo began photographing in 1924 during Mexico's thriving post-revolutionary artistic renaissance. While his early work embraced Mexico's urban realities, its peasants and workers, and its hauntingly beautiful landscape, Alvarez Bravo's ever-present acknowledgment of the macabre prompted André Breton, the leader of Surrealism in France, to claim him as an exponent of the movement. This volume offers a perfect introduction to his works.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Polaroids

Essay by Colete Alvarez Urbajtel.
Published by Editorial RM

Manuel Alvarez Bravo is generally recognized as one of the masters of modern photography, and as one of Mexico's most significant artists. He is well known for his black and white images, therefore this selection of never-before-published Polaroids might be a surprise to those familiar only with his signature style. The simple design of the book--a single photograph per page, reproduced in the original Polaroid's dimensions--creates an ideal context in which to enjoy this segment of Bravo's work. Colette Alvarez Urbajtel, the photographer's widow writes: “Although Manuel used a Hasselblad with special backing until his late career, when Polaroid cameras appeared on the market, he was quick to avail himself of their convenience and speed. He started taking black and white Polaroids with the appropriate fixtures, and then moved on to color. His work in color tended to be the result of some sudden impulse, when he had just supplied himself with materials or in quest of a particular effect. It might be at home, on the weekend, when there were people visiting, or when he wished to capture some prank of his daughters . . .” Beautifully reproduced, Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Polaroids reveals a playful, charming and spontaneous side of the great Mexican master of light and shade, and is the first book on his work published since his death in 2003. It will appeal to those interested in photography and Mexican art in general.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Essay by Susan Kismaric. Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry.
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Manuel Alvarez Bravo is one of the foremost figures of modern photography and the only photographer among the great Mexican artists of the 20th century. Bravo has produced work of exceptional quality throughout his long career: formal experiments of the 1920s were followed by modernists works inspired by such international trends as Surrealism, and the early 30s saw him develop a gifted personal style that suggested specific Mexican customs and rituals. The majority of this volume's 175 tritone plates were made from rare vintage prints assembled from private collections or furnished by the artist; many have never before been published and some have not been seen or exhibited since the 1930s. This volume was published in conjunction with a 1997 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Nudes

The Blue House

Edited by Ariadne Kimberly Huque. Introduction by Carlos Fuentes.
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.

Born in 1902, Manuel Alvarez Bravo is Mexico's most celebrated living photographer. His far-reaching body of work includes many of the 20th century's most recognizable and iconic images. Collected here is a seductive, timeless, and entrancing sampling of the maestro's nudes, images taken in 1939 and as recently as the 1990s. Sensitively edited and sequenced by Ariadne Kimberly Huque, and with an impassioned and poetic introduction by Carlos Fuentes, this delicate, elegant volume beautifully reproduces some of Bravo's most favorite work, and provides an intimate window through which to view the career of one of the camera's true masters.