La buena fama durmiendo, 1939

Manuel Álvarez Bravo is considered the most significant figure in 20th-century Latin American photography and one of Mexico’s greatest artists. His subjects included folk art, nudes, and burial rituals and decorations. His best-known works are the beautiful “Good Reputation, Sleeping” from 1939 (MS 317) and the disturbing “Striking Worker Assassinated” from 1934. Manuel Álvarez Bravo was born in Mexico City. He met Hugo Brehme, a German photographer, in 1923, and soon after he bought his first camera and began to study photography seriously. In 1925, he married Dolores Martinez de Anda, who would go on to become a respected photographer in her own right, under the name Lola Álvarez Bravo. That same year, Manuel Álvarez Bravo won first prize in a local photography competition in Oaxaca, and in 1927 he met Tina Modotti, who introduced him to the thriving arts scene in post-revolutionary Mexico City. He began his professional career in 1928 and received significant encouragement from Edward Weston in 1929. In 1935, Manuel Álvarez Bravo participated in a groundbreaking photography exhibition with Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City. Also in the 1930s, he taught photography at the San Carlos Academy. Between 1943 and 1959, he worked as a photographer in the Mexican film industry.