Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Manuel Álvarez Bravo studied painting at the Academia de San Carlos. His interest in visual arts began at an early age. Both his father and grandfather, a teacher and painter, respectively, were fans of photography, which allowed him to self-teach and explore the technical aspects of the discipline and of graphics, as well. At the beginning of his career, he focused on pictorialism, and in 1930 he began working on the magazine Mexican Folkways, through which he collaborated with some of the greatest minds in Mexican muralism. From that time on, he devoted himself to the experimentation that arose in the decades after the so-called “Mexican Renaissance.” His work came to represent quintessentially Mexican elements, but also aesthetic, literary and musical observations. A humanistic outlook and attention to detail mark his work. His almost 80-year-long artistic career made him one of the foremost representatives of modern photography in Latin America.