Myth Meets Modernism: The Manuel Álvarez Bravo Portfolio

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June 11 - August 4, 2019

Special Exhibitions Gallery, Second Floor

Hand-selected by the artist in the late 1970s, this portfolio of fifteen prints spanned several decades and revealed the prodigious Mexican photographer’s career-long preoccupation with myth, folklore, and death. Álvarez Bravo’s subjects, like those of his contemporaries Tina Modotti, Edward Weston, and Paul Strand, are seen through a distinctly modernist lens. However, the photographer’s frequent juxtaposition of banal, everyday subjects set within the Mexican landscape yields complex, often enigmatic compositions. Álvarez Bravo’s predilection for poetic language in the titles of his works only heightens the ambiguity of his photographs, while rooting his project within the ancient and modern artistic traditions of Mexico.

 

Organized by the Palmer Museum of Art.