![Manuel Álvarez Bravo - Frida Kahlo [1930s]](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2949/15427828382_15ce23153d_o.jpg)
Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexico City, February 4, 1902 - Mexico City, October 19, 2002) was Mexico’s first principal artistic photographer and is the most important figure in 20th-century Latin American photography. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with is artistic peak between the 1920s to the 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. He rejected the picturesque, employing elements to avoid stereotyping. Over his career he had numerous exhibitions of his work, worked in the Mexican cinema and established Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house. He won numerous awards for his work, mostly after 1970.
[Sotheby’s, New York - Signed and annotated México in pencil on the reverse, framed, 1930s, printed later - 24.1 by 18.4 cm]