Manuel Álvarez Bravo [ˈman.wel ˈal.βa.ɾeθ ˈbɾa.vo] (February 4, 1902 – October 19, 2002) was a Mexican artistic photographer and one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography.

[2] His father was a teacher but pursued painting, music, producing several plays and his grandfather was a professional portrait maker.

[7] She introduced him to a number of intellectuals and artists in Mexico City, including photographer Edward Weston, who encouraged him to continue with the craft.

That same year, Tina Modotti was deported from Mexico for political activities and she left Alvarez Bravo her camera and her job at Mexican Folkways magazine.

[3][5] In 1938, he met French Surrealist artist André Breton, who promoted Alvaréz Bravo's work in France, exhibiting it there.

Alvarez Bravo created “La buena fama durmiendo” (The good reputation sleeping), which Mexican censors rejected due to nudity.

[3] Alvarez Bravo trained most of the next generation of photographers including Nacho López, Héctor García and Graciela Iturbide.

[5] In 1935, he exhibited with Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, with catalogue texts from Langston Hughes and Luis Cardoza y Aragón.

[5] In 1959 he founded the Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana with Leopoldo Méndez, Gabriel Figueroa, Carlos Pellicer and Rafael Carrillo which produces books on Mexican art.

[3][5] Alvarez Bravo's first significant award for his photography was first prize for an image of two lovers on a boat at the Feria Regional Ganadera in Oaxaca.

These include the Elias Sourasky Arts Prize in 1974, Premio Nacional de Arte and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975, nomination for the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1982, Hasselblad Award in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1984, Master of Photography Prize from the International Center of Photography in New York in 1987, Hugo Erfurth International Photography Award and the Agfa Gevaert Prize in Leverkusen, Germany in 1991, nomination as Creador Emérito by CONACULTA in 1993 and Gold Medal Award from the National Arts Club in New York along with the Leica Medal of Excellence and the Grand Cross of Merit Order in Portugal in 1995.

The Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo is a non profit association founded in 1996 by Francisco Toledo in the city of Oaxaca.

[5] This consists of 2,294 images, custody of which is now with the Casa Lamm Cultural Center in Mexico City which built a special vault for it.

[16] His primary subjects were nudes, folk art and rituals, especially burials and decorations, shop windows, urban streets and everyday interactions.

[10] Alvarez Bravo's photographs almost never depict trappings of political power, instead preferring subjects related to everyday life.

[3] Alvarez Bravo's early work was influenced by European Cubism, French Surrealism and abstract art.

[21] His photographs became more complicated with ancient symbols of blood, death and religion along with the paradoxes and ambiguities of Mexican culture.

His experience with death as a child as the Mexican Revolution was unfolding played a role in his photographs from the explicit “Striking Worker, Assassinated” to the more subtle “Portrait of the Eternal.” However, while Alvarez Bravo was interested in Mexico's cultural identity, he was not particularly political.

[3] Alvarez Bravo's trademark was the ability to capture hidden and surreal essences beneath the apparently ordinary images he was photographing.

[10] Alvarez Bravo was the first Mexican photographer to take a militantly anti-picturesque stand, to avoid stereotyping Mexico's variety of cultures.

One way Alvarez Bravo did this was to employ a sense of irony, to the addition of an element contrary to expectations and the main focus of the photograph.

[22] He used his lens to present Mexico City not in terms of moral or heroic, but rather of social relationships and material clashes.

[22] During the 1930s and 1940s, he discovered increasingly more complex ways to frame the contradictions of Mexico's urban life into social statements.