Feb 19, 2009 - Sale 2170

Sale 2170 - Lot 61

Price Realized: $ 14,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
BRAVO, MANUEL ALVAREZ (1902-2002)
"Un Pez que Llaman Sierra [A Fish Called Sword]." Silver print, 8 1/2x6 1/2 inches (21.6x16.5 cm.), with Bravo's signature and "Mexico," in pencil, on verso; tipped to a 1940s mount. 1944; printed 1950s-early 1960s
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Additional Details

From the Citiscape Photo Gallery, Pasadena, California; to Tony de Carlo (circa 1995); to the present owner.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Kismaric), 145.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Photopoetry, 185.


Manuel Alvarez Bravo''s childhood in Mexico City was punctuated by violence associated with the Mexican revolution. Therefore, scenes of death were an integral part of his childhood memory. As an adult, this theme reemerges as an obvious or a subtle undertone in his pictures.


In 1915, Bravo left school to start working. He was introduced to photography by a friend, whose father gave Bravo a daguerreotype camera. Bravo made photographs at home in a darkroom that utilized his mother''s pans and other inventive items. He taught himself the medium''s technical aspects by reading the English labels on developer cartons, speaking with local suppliers, and studying photography magazines. In 1924 he purchased his first camera and began experimenting with Pictorialism.


By 1928 Bravo''s photographs were included in one of the first photography exhibitions in Mexico City entitled, "Primer salón Mexicano de fotografíe." The works in this show influenced the young photographer and caused him to pursue a modernist idiom. The following year, at the suggestion of Tina Modotti, who was then living in Mexico, he sent a portfolio of work to Edward Weston. Weston praised Bravo stating, "if you are a new worker, photography''s fortunate in having someone with your viewpoint." In 1935 an exhibition that included his work traveled to New York City to the Julien Levy Gallery, which both developed his reputation internationally and placed him with the Surrealists.


This particular image embodies many aspects of Bravo''s unique photographic style. His imagery has a dream-like quality that is enhanced by his titles, which are more poetic than descriptive; unusual juxtapositions of everyday life are a constant theme in his work. Bravo loved his native Mexico, the people and their relationship with the land is another subtext of his pictures. Here, a young Mexican girl holds a fish--which is both a source of food and powerful symbol of Christ--against a vast sky and a watery backdrop.