Manuel Álvarez Bravo 1902-2002

on a large tan mount, signed and annotated 'Mexico' by the photographer in pencil on the mount, titled, possibly by him, and dated and annotated 'Mexico, D. F.' in an unidentified hand in pencil, an 'Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia' stamp dated 'Feb 1 1943' and with a Galeria de Arte Mexicano, No. 162, typed exhibition label with credit, title, date, and measurements, on the reverse, matted, framed, 1931

Collection of Doris Heydn, Manuel Álvarez Bravo's wife

Christie's New York, 20 April 1994, Sale 7864, Lot 62

Acquired by the present owner from the above 

Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Fotografias (Mexico: La Sociedad de Arte Moderno, 1945, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 51

Jane Livingston, M. Alvarez Bravo (Washington, D. C.: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1978, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 40

Susan Kismaric, Manuel Alvarez Bravo (The Museum of Modern Art, 1997, in conjunction with the exhibition), p. 76

Aperture Masters of Photography (New York, 1997), p. 29

Manuel Álvarez Bravo made El Soñador (The Dreamer) during the most creative phase of his long photographic career.  As in so many of his photographs from this time, he focused his camera on one of the impoverished denizens of Mexico City, in this case a young man in dirty clothes sleeping on the pavement.  Bravo wrote about taking this photograph:

'I especially liked to watch the customs porters in Santiago Tlatelolco station, who after work would fall asleep exhausted on the sidewalk.  I felt great compassion for them.  That's where I took the photograph I called The Dreamer. . .I am happy to have lived in those streets.  There everything was food for my camera, everything had an inherent social content; in life everything has social content' (Kismaric, p. 26).

The image, however, transcends its documentary elements -- with the help of its evocative title -- and operates on another, less literal level.  Although he was associated with the Surrealist movement in the 1930s and 1940s, Bravo did not consider himself a Surrealist.  Rather, many of his best-known works, El Soñador among them, conform more to the particularly Latin American vision known in literature as 'magic realism.'  Susan Kismaric has pointed out the qualities of magic realism that are present in Bravo's photographs: an ordinary incident from daily life distilled into its essence as an emblem or fable; a dream-like quality so pervasive that it becomes its own reality; and a resonant and meaningful title that that adds to the mythic dimension of the work.   El Soñador demonstrates Bravo's ability to create a photograph that is both an accurate depiction of the real world, as well as a dream-like meditation upon that world.  

The photograph offered here comes originally from the collection of Doris Heydn (also known as Heyden), Manuel Álvarez Bravo's second wife.  Heydn, an American journalist, met Bravo during a visit to Mexico. They married in 1942, and she became part of the post-revolutionary group of artists, writers, scholars, and political activists committed to political and social change in the country.  The subject of Bravo's Sueno de Una Turista (1942-45) and several of his X-ray photographs, Heydn undertook graduate studies in the 1950s.  After her 1962 divorce from Bravo, she became a prominent scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, writing more than 100 articles, books, and translations. She died in Mexico City in 2005.

According to Bravo authority Spencer Throckmorton, the Galeria de Arte Mexicano, whose label is on the reverse of this print, represented Bravo's work at the time this photograph was made.  This print was made no later than February 1943, when it was shown at the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, as evidenced by the dated exhibition stamp on the reverse.  It is believed that only two early prints of this image have appeared at auction: the print offered here, in 1994, and another sold in these rooms on 17 April 2002 (Sale 7777, Lot 132).