Lola Alvarez Bravo’s work has often been overshadowed by the fame of her photographer husband, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, but her unique vision equally merits our attention. She worked in a variety of genres, from portraiture to photojournalism to photomontage, and treated each subject with curiosity and sympathy. She pioneered the field of photography for Mexican women and bravely abandoned many of the social norms for women of her era.
Early Life
Lola began her life as Dolores Martinez de Anda in Jalisco, Mexico, and much of her early life is unknown. She was born during the first decade of the 1900s, but the exact year is debated. She moved with her father and brother to Mexico City when she was very young, and it is unclear whether her mother’s absence was due to death or abandonment. She led a privileged life until the death of her father, after which she moved in with her older brother.
Marriage
Lola married Manuel Alvarez Bravo, a childhood friend, in 1925. The newlyweds moved to Oaxaca, where Manuel worked a day job and continued to pursue his lifelong interest in photography. Lola began to share his camera and darkroom work as a way to connect with her new husband’s interests. The Alvarez Bravos befriended many of the artists and intellectuals of their era, such as Diego Rivera and Tina Modotti.
When Manuel’s roving eye led the Alvarez Bravos to separate in 1934, Lola began her own career as a photographer. She put her son in the care of Manuel’s mother and moved into the Mexico City apartment of the painter Maria Izquierdo.
Career
Due to her independence and hard work, Alvarez Bravo became an important figure in the Mexican modern art movement. She began her photojournalism career as a photographer for El Maestro Rural, a magazine for public school teachers. Other landmark jobs include a commission to photograph murals and church carvings, many commissions from Hoy and Rotofoto magazines, and 30 years as chief photographer for the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura. These jobs enabled her to travel around Mexico, where she went beyond her assignments to photograph her country’s culture and social problems.
In Mexico City, she continued to travel in artistic and intellectual circles. It became fashionable for the big names of the era to have their picture taken by Alvarez Bravo, and she photographed such well-known figures as David Alfaro Siqueiros, Salvador Novo, Carlos Fuentes, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Maria Izquierdo, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She also ran her own art gallery and taught photography for many years at the Academia de San Carlos.
Lola died in 1993, several years after she was forced to abandon her photography due to her worsening vision. Towards the end of her life she gained international attention for her intimate portraits of Frida Kahlo.
Lola Alvarez Bravo’s Photography
Lola expressed herself through photography with a distinctive voice. Unlike her former husband, Lola preferred to photograph her observations of real life rather than manipulating and posing shots. She “had difficulty speaking of her work as a kind of refined artistic expression; it had simply become an extension of herself” (Ferrer, p. 44).
Sensitivity to unnoticed people and private moments seems to be one mark of her work. She often observed things in society that others would have preferred to ignore. Alvarez Bravo often portrayed her subjects in their physical context. In her work, a subject’s gestures and surroundings were just as important to a portrait as their facial features.
Lola often experimented or broke the ‘rules’ of photography to achieve a more interesting picture. The most obviously experimental images were her photomontages. However, she often used unusual angles and harsh lighting to create mood and drama in her photojournalism.
Source:
- Ferrer, Elizabeth. Lola Alvarez Bravo. New York, NY: Aperature Foundation, 2006.
 |
