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Mexican Revelations: The Art of Manuel Alvarez Bravo
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10473 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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1 / 1993 |
1,819 Words |
| Author
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Judith Bell
Judith Bell is an art historian and novelist based in
Arlington, Virginia. |
"Memory is hunger," wrote Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast, and perhaps nowhere as in the work of Mexico's celebrated photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo is this poignant truth more palpable. Bravo's memories are not just his own but those of Mexico, of a country shaped by the uneasy melding of pre-Cortezian and European cultures, two forces that shift and change like the plates beneath the land of Mexico itself. Revelaciones: The Art of Manuel Alvarez Bravo the touring retrospective organized by the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, and made possible by a grant from American Express documents a career spanning over six decades and two very different sources of influence: Western/Christian and the thought and mythology of ancient Mexican cultures.
Meaning-Laden Images
Bravo's subjects whether landscapes, nudes, portraits, or the murals of Mexico are always more than they seem. Metaphors whose references lie in the pre-Hispanic mythology and beliefs that continue to shape daily life, dress, food, music, and religious celebrations and festivals, these photographs are, for the uninitiated and the non-Mexican, mysterious and elusive works that defy the truth telling mandate of photography. It is here, where myth and memory collide, that Bravo works his magic making images at once mercurial and languid that float seductively just beyond the mind's grasp.
Bravo was born in Mexico City in 1902 into an atmosphere, as the artist recalls, "in which art was breathed," where literature, music, and the visual arts were part of the daily fabric of life. His grandfather, Manuel Alvarez Rivas, was a painter and photographer; his father, Manuel Alvarez Garcia, was a writer and painter. The revolution of 1910, with its accompanying street violence, brought an abrupt halt to his formal education. He learned to read, write, and count but little else. The sound of cannons and the sight of cadavers offered deeper impressions.
When he was fourteen, Bravo began working as an office boy at the Treasury Department, where he held various positions through 1931. He studied accounting for two years, and painting and music for another year at the San Carlos Academy of Arts. But it was in 1922 that he first became interested in photography, through his exposure to the British publications Amateur Photographer and Photography. Two years later he purchased his first camera, a Century Master 25, and began photographing in the European influenced pictorialist style of Guillermo Kahlo, father of painter Frida Kahlo.
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