Through March 1st, 2014, the Throckmorton gallery in New York will exhibit thirty photographs by self-taught Mexican photographer Manuel Alvares Bravo. Despite his friendships with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Henri Cartier-Bresson, the most important Latin American photographer ever only printed a handful of his photographs, mainly due to financial reasons. Those currently on display revisit a part of his body of work: his famous portraits (1935), his abstract games with light (1931), and his explorations of space (1947) appear in their original versions mostly a black-and-white that emphasizes clarity rather than contrast.
Although the exhibition may seem incomplete, viewers can still witness the avant-garde vision that made Manuel Alvarez Bravo an emissary between pictorialism and modern photography, as well as an explorer of the aesthetic possibilities of the medium. In a retrospective work published in 2012 by La Martinière, Bernard Plossu wrote: “‘The landscape is also human,’ [Don Manuel] told Brigitte Ollier when she visited him at his home in Mexico. Those few words say it all. Don Manuel’s landscapes are human, full of life led by the people he saw so clearly. To see is to understand. The photographs have a simple, spontaneous power. But don’t be fooled. As Giorgio Morandi, the great Italian painter, once said: ‘Nothing could be more abstract than what we actually see.’”
EXHIBITION
Manuel Alvarez Bravo : VINTAGE
Throckmorton Fine Art
January 16 — March 1, 2014
145 E 57th St, New York, NY 10022
USA
(212) 223-1059
http://www.throckmorton-nyc.com
http://www.manuelalvarezbravo.org
