Beginning her career as a teacher, Álvarez took photographic assignments for magazines and newspapers, developing a reputation as one of the only women photojournalists working in Mexico City.

She chose to portray subjects candidly, revealing the deeper meaning of culture and social significance, rather than seeking newsworthy work.

In 1935, she began cataloging photographs in the Department of Education and two years later was hired to run the photography workshops of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she remained until her retirement in 1971.

[17] Though Manuel was still working for the National Accounting Office, soon after his son, Manuelito's birth, he resigned to pursue a career as a professional photographer.

[2][14] In 1927, opening an art gallery in their home, the couple exhibited photographs and paintings created by their artistic friends, including David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera,[14] and Rufino Tamayo.

[17] Relegating her to minor tasks, like mixing chemicals and printing, Manuel was reluctant to allow Álvarez time with the camera, but she did recommend thematic ideas to him and learned the craft.

[18] At a time when most newspaper photographers were interested in producing sensational images, Manuel taught Álvarez to distance herself from her subjects to capture their underlying essence.

[21] One of her early works from this period is titled La Visitación (The Visitation) and was taken on an excursion with Manuel and the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The trio had traveled to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and Álvarez's image of two women standing in a doorway, captured the solace offered by the subjects to each other.

[22] Rather than the posed compositions favored by her husband,[12] or the ideologically motivated portraits taken by Modotti,[23] Álvarez's image focuses on the subtle meanings of everyday life captured by the camera.

Maria's house became a haven for intellectuals, artists, and politicians to meet and participate in the formation of the Mexican cultural identity that defined the post revolutionary era.

[31] In 1937 Álvarez began working as a photographer at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in the Institute of Aesthetic Research.

[8] She photographed factories, farms, fire stations, schools, hospitals, and orphanages throughout Mexico to accompany magazine articles[33] and undertook assignments in advertising and fashion photography.

Álvarez would come back to this medium the late forties and fifties in the form of large posters commissioned by several business and institutions that began with various covers for El Maestro Rural in the thirties.

[36] In 1941, Álvarez started her 30 year long position as chief of photography for the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBA).

[11][28] She also featured the works of Isabel Villaseñor in the Galeria de Arte Contemporáneo in 1954 in memory of the artist's death the previous year.

[8] She sold to the federal government over 2,500 negatives of her work and organized a presentation of her portraits at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 1965.

[41] In 1991, an exhibition organized in Dallas, Texas, by the Society of Friends of Mexican Culture, highlighted Álvarez's intimate portraits of Kahlo, expanding her international acclaim as it traveled to other cities such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C.

According to James Oles, a specialist in Latin American art and a lecturer at Wellesley College, the new material gave "us original titles and dates that radically change the meaning and interpretation" of some of Álvarez's works.

[48][49] The images were added to the Center's archive and several shows followed, including the exhibition Lola Álvarez Bravo and the Photography of an Era, which featured the additions in 2013.

[52][53] Álvarez exclusively employed black and white film for her pictures, rather than color photography, as a means of allowing fuller development between monochrome contrasts.

For example, in one assignment where she went to Papantla, in Veracruz, to shoot the Danza de los Voladores, she ignored the dancers photographed by others, instead taking pictures of pilgrims coming to attend the ritual, the processional entrance of the sacred pole, and an animal sacrifice.

[58] Besides the images of her friend Frida Kahlo, for whom she was known internationally later in her career,[51] are portraits of artists, such as Lilia Carrillo, Olga Costa, Marion Greenwood, María Izquierdo, Alice Rahon, and Cordelia Urueta; cultural preservationists, including Pita Amor, Anita Brenner, and Judith Martínez Ortega; and writers, such as Rosario Castellanos, and Elena Poniatowska.

[11][63] She did not like stylized studio shots, but wandered with her camera, searching for poignant moments and arresting compositions, which depicted the landscape, people and customs of Mexico.

[64] Typical are her photographs of indigenous women, like Un descanso, llanto e indiferencia (A Rest, Weeping and Indifference), from 1940, which portrays the exploitation and lonely suffering of its subject, [65] or El sueño de los pobres 2 (The Dream of the Poor, 2), in which a young boy lies sleeping amidst a collection of sandals.

The photograph features an indigenous woman who is holding her stoic daughter while her back faces the camera, revealing the intricate details of her braid, and Álvarez Bravo's signature way of capturing the light that plays on the body of the mother.

According to Kahlo's wishes, she was dressed in an outfit she had selected, her nails were painted and hair braided and her favorite jewelry adorned her neck and fingers.

Their faces are obscured, their heads are covered with scarves, and they humbly gaze toward their feet, separated from the queue of male mourners, bordering the group of women.

[84] The care with which the composition was made, contrasting the white flowing garments against the dark landscape and coffin, establishes a "rhythmic, lyrical pattern, creating an otherworldly effect".

[85] Demonstrating both her respect for indigenous culture[82] and desire to document Mexican rituals,[86] Álvarez also captured a deeper social meaning in the photograph.