![]() But one of photography’s unique functions is to describe particulars. Viewers of photographs may tend to generalize from them-sometimes at the photographer’s instigation, often independently, and always at their own risk. But the work is free of slogans and generalities. ![]() Certainly this is intentional, and emblematic of his politics. There is a valorization of people on the lower social strata which is inherent in the persistent address of Bravo’s vision to their experience, and implicit in his uninterest in the middle and upper classes. Alvarez Bravo’s imagery does not deal in stereotypes his awareness of and response to the ethos of Mexican culture is far too complex and multi-leveled to permit such oversimplification. This is not to be understood as “socialist realism” in any sense. ![]() Additionally, his work assumes that photography is an explicitly demotic visual language, to whose fullest progressive range he is committed. 2 Some attention seems in order, if only to acknowledge what has been achieved. One of these is his remarkable absence from all the standard reference works on photographic history (except for Peter Pollack’s Picture History of Photography, wherein he is mentioned only in passing and misindexed as “Alvarez-Bruno”). Insofar as it appears to be voluntary, I find myself loathe to violate that privacy. One cannot help but suspect that to some extent this is self-imposed, born of a “fugitive” or reticent nature and a consistent avoidance of personal publicity. Yet Manuel Alvarez Bravo, still little known outside his native country and the professional world of photography, has in the past half-century forged a body of work precisely to meet such standards: fugitive, sensitive, personal, nourished by experience, deeply rooted in his culture and his people.įor an imagemaker whose work has been known to and admired by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Diego Rivera, and André Breton, remaining obscure after 50 years of work in his chosen medium is no mean feat. Coming from a photographer, these words do not proclaim a personal achievement, but they do indicate his aspirations for photography. Manuel Alvarez Bravo, from Painted Walls of Mexico 1 It is the work of talent nourished by personal experience and by that of the community-rather than being taken from the experiences of other painters in other times and other cultures, which forms the intellectual chain of non popular art. The art called Popular is quite fugitive in character, of sensitive and personal quality, with less of the impersonal and intellectual characteristics that are the essence of the art of the schools. The more pretentious artist craves to become famous, and it is characteristic of his work that it is bought for the name rather than for the work-a name that is built up by propaganda.īefore the Conquest all art was of the people, and popular art has never ceased to exist in Mexico. His work needs no advertisement, as it is done for the people around him. A popular painter is an artisan who, as in the Middle Ages, remains anonymous.
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