Manuel Álvarez Bravo QUÉ CHIQUITO ES EL MUNDO (WHAT A SMALL WORLD) Courtesy the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Álvarez Bravo's work reflects the radical changes of the era, both illustrating the passage of time and capturing unexpected moments of everyday life in Mexico. In the photographs of the 1930s and 1940s for which he is best known, he framed the disparity of urban and rural realities into a poetic vision of his native culture and its contradictions. Fascinated by the street scenes, signs, vendors, and storefronts of Mexico City, he also traveled throughout the countryside documenting customs, festivities, and folklore. His photographs examining people, animals, and their surroundings, and such details as burial sites, walls, and roadside shrines often question perceptions of reality. Other stirring works explore the surrealist themes of sleep, dreams, death, and the erotic.

An intellectual and philosopher, Álvarez Bravo demonstrates a remarkable ability to create photographs that blend social consciousness with poetic imagery. By drawing the act of viewing into his work, he creates an extended meditation on the nature of photography itself. He presents a concise vision of Mexico as a literal and symbolic landscape of subjects detained in dream-world tableaux of longing, solitude, candor, and foreboding.