Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Photopoetry

This major retrospective documents and celebrates the work of Manuel Alvarez Bravo, the most significant force in Mexican photography and one of the foremost visual arts practitioners of the twentieth century. 

Complete with a preface by Alvarez Bravo’s widow Colette Alvarez Urbajtel, illuminating essays by internationally renowned writers John Banville, Jean-Claude Lemagny and Carlos Fuentes, as well as a full chronology and bibliography, this is the definitive monograph on a true master of modern photography.

Over 370 tritone photographs mark Alvarez Bravo’s remarkable eighty-year career. Strikingly poetic and richly resonant, the collection includes iconic images as well as over thirty previously unpublished masterpieces. 

Urban and rural scenes, still lifes, nudes, religious and vernacular subjects, portraits of luminaries including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Octavio Paz: all illustrate the peerless acuity of the photographer’s eye. Above all, Alvarez Bravo’s work celebrates his beloved Mexico, with its indigenous rituals and age-old customs.

John Banville is an acclaimed novelist and journalist. He has been the recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. His book The Sea won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He lives in Dublin.
Jean-Claude Lemagny is a photography critic and historian who has authored numerous books and articles. For many years he was the curator of photography at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
Carlos Fuentes is the author of more than twenty books. He has received many awards and honours, including the National Prize in Literature (Mexico’s highest literary award) and France’s Legion of Honour.