Photographers [Oo] Daydreaming | Photos by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, 1928-39
Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Figures in the Castle, 1920s
In 1938, he met French Surrealist artist André Breton, who promoted Alvaréz Bravo’s work in France, exhibiting it there. Later, Breton asked for a photograph for the cover of catalog for an exhibition in Mexico. Alvarez Bravo created “La buena fama durmiendo” (The good reputation sleeping), which Mexican censors rejected due to nudity.
Breton said about Bravo: “He has shown us everything that is poetic in Mexico. Where Manuel Álvarez Bravo has stopped to photograph a light, a sign, a silence, it is not only where Mexico’s heart beats, but also where the artist has been able to feel, with a unique vision, the totally objective value of his emotion.”