Lola Álvarez Bravo: The Photography of an Era

She is one of Mexico’s most important twentieth century photographers. Although she had a prolific career, which spanned nearly fifty years, she remains historically overshadowed by her famous husband, Manuel Álvarez Bravo and other important photographers of her time such as Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. Lola Álvarez Bravo worked in commercial photography and taught photography in addition to pursuing her personal artistic interests. Her experimentation with photographic techniques such as photomontage and photo collage and her use of photography to expose the social and political issues of her time, contributed greatly to the development of modern Mexican photography.

Lola Álvarez Bravo: The Photography of an Era provides an unprecedented opportunity to reconsider the career of this remarkable and influential artist. It is an exhibition that introduces many photographic materials to the public for the first time, adds to the scholarship and opens avenues for new research on her work.

Soon after her death, a significant part of Lola’s archive was acquired from her son by the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; however, a previously unknown portion of Lola’s archive remained in Mexico in the collection of the Rendón family. This exhibition showcases the recently discovered group of photographs in the Rendón Collection, which includes unpublished negatives and archival material of Lola’s work as well as over twenty vintage prints by Manuel Álvarez Bravo and a group of images by Lola’s students at the Academia de San Carlos, including Mariana Yampolsky and Raúl Conde. The Rendón’s remarkable and well-preserved collection reveals the complex breadth of Lola’s career from the formation of her aesthetic in her husband’s darkroom in the 1920s to her influence on the work of her students in the 1950s.

The exhibition Lola Álvarez Bravo: The Photography of an Era is organized by the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Mexico City, in collaboration with the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y Las Artes and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico. It is curated by Rachael Arauz and Adriana Zavala with James Oles as curatorial advisor. It will be on view at the Museum of Latin American Art from September 23, 2012 to January 20, 2013, before concluding its tour at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. . The exhibition is accompanied by a 156 page scholarly catalog with essays and black and white as well as color images, published by Editorial RM, Mexico.