Manuel Álvarez Bravo

mounted, signed and annotated 'Mexico' in pencil on the mount, dedicated in Spanish, 'For Gabriel Figueroa, With admiration, respect, and fondness for your great artistic and revolutionary work in Mexican cinema, Your friend and companion' (translated from the Spanish), in ink on the reverse, 1932-34, probably printed in the 1940s

Gift of the photographer to the Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa

By descent to the present owner

Other prints of this image:

Fred R. Parker, Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Pasadena Art Museum, 1971), p. 30

Jane Livingston, M Álvarez Bravo (Washington, D. C.: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1978), pl. 42

Susan Kismaric, Manuel Álvarez Bravo (The Museum of Modern Art, 1997), p. 78

Revelaciones: The Art of Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Albuquerque, 1990), pl. 11

Manuel Álvarez Bravo: Cien Años, Cien Días (Mexico, 2001), pl. 33

Aperture Masters of Photography: Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Aperture, 1987), p. 15

In Focus: Manuel Álvarez Bravo (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001), pl. 18

Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson & Walker Evans: Documentary & Anti-Graphic: Photographs (Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Musée de l'Elysée Lausanne, 2004), p. 79

Manuel Álvarez Bravo: Photopoetry (San Francisco, 2008), p. 119

This early, somewhat warm-toned print, on paper with a surface sheen and mounted to off-white board that is dark on the reverse, is in generally good to very good condition. When examined in raking light, several indentations that do not break the emulsion are visible, particularly in the upper left quadrant of the print. The mount has some creasing, notably in the upper left corner and in the right margin. These do not affect the image. The reverse of the mount has a small abrasion at the lower edge. The dedication in ink for Gabriel Figueroa on the reverse of the mount reads as follows, 'Para Gabriel Figuerora [sic] con admiracion repeto y carino, por su gran obra artistica y revolucio naria en el cine mexicano, Su amigo y compariero.' (For Gabriel Figueroa, With admiration, respect, and fondness for your great artistic and revolutionary work in Mexican cinema, Your friend and companion) This photograph has been cleaned. A treatment report is available upon request.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

As of this writing it is believed that only one other early print of Los Agachados – one of Manuel-Alvarez Bravo's key images from the 1930s -- has appeared at auction: an unsigned print, with reprographic notations on the reverse, from the collection of André Breton (Paris, Calmels Cohen, 15-17 April 2003, Lot 5308).   Los Agachados (The Crouched Ones) was almost certainly shown in Julian Levy's 1935 exhibition of photographs by Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Walker Evans, Documentary and Anti-Graphic Photographs, in New York. Through his skillful use of light to both emphasize and de-emphasize selected details, Bravo transforms an ordinary Mexican scene – a group of men eating at a storefront restaurant – into a photograph that defies easy interpretation.  Some details are obscured, such as the heads of the men seated at the counter, while others are carefully delineated, such as the chains linking the restaurant's twisted-metal stools. The figures appear as if on a stage, enclosed as they are by the storefront's walls, overhead gate, and tiled floor.  It is the elusive, sometimes dreamlike, often menacing quality of Bravo's images that made him so appealing to the Surrealists, Breton foremost among them.  It was Bravo's completely straight and unadorned approach to his medium that earned him the acknowledgement of photographers as diverse as Tina Modotti, Cartier-Bresson, and Edward Weston. 

The print offered here is inscribed warmly by Bravo to the famous Mexican cinematographer, Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997).  Figueroa's career in film lasted from the 1930s into the 1980s, and he had success in both the Mexican and Hollywood film industries.  He worked extensively with Luis Buñuel, on Los Olvidados (1950), Nazarin (1959), and The Exterminating Angel (1962), among others; with John Huston on The Night of the Iguana (1964) and Under the Volcano (1984); and with John Ford on The Fugitive (1947).  He is regarded as the principle cinematographer of the golden age of Mexican Cinema, and his visual style influenced subsequent generations of filmmakers. 

Bravo's connection with Figueroa began in the 1920s.  According to Bravo, it was through Figueroa that Bravo first encountered the work of Tina Modotti: 'While in Oaxaca, I received many magazines and other publications from Mexico City, and through them I learned about Tina Modotti, particularly through two magazines – one published by Gabriel Figueroa and Gabriel Fernandez Ledesma [presumably Forma] (Mildred Constantine, Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life, p. 96).  Bravo went on to work as a still photographer on a number of the films for which Figueroa was a cinematographer, and the two were friends-in-common with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros among other leading Mexican artists.  In the 1950s, Bravo, Figueroa, and Rivera began collaboration on a film that would celebrate the painter's work.  Rivera's death in 1957 brought an end to the project, although the footage has recently been reassembled by Bravo's daughter and Figueroa's son in the documentary A Portrait of Diego: The Revolutionary Gaze (2007).