From Art Knowledge News
SOUTH BEND, IN – The Snite Museum of Art opens the photography exhibition Lola Alvarez Bravo that will be on display in the O’Shaughnessy West Gallery from January 25 until March 15, 2009. Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has organized this traveling exhibition and produced the accompanying publications. Lola Alvarez Bravo (1907-1993) was a very important Mexican photographer whose career was overshadowed by her famous ex-husband, Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Long admired in her own country, her work is finally being recognized internationally.
Lola received her first commission in 1936. She continued to photograph for fifty years, traveling throughout Mexico, documenting daily life in the countryside and in cities. Known for her portraits of artists, Lola frequently photographed the famous painter Frida Kahlo. Her archives are at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, which is supplying most of the prints that will be displayed.
Aperture, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts, has organized this traveling exhibition and produced the accompanying publication.
Lola Alvarez Bravo (Dolores Martinez de Anda) was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. She met Manuel Alvarez Bravo when she was a child; she married him in 1925 and together they moved to live in Oaxaca. The richness of its traditions and art had a great impact on her. The couple had little money and had to share a single camera between them. Manuel limited the scope of his wife’s artistic activity yet taught her a wide range of photographic techniques.
The couple became friendly with many of the most important intellectuals and artists of the time including Diego Rivera and the poets known as the “Contemporaneos.” In 1935, when Alvarez Bravo separated from her husband, she began to do photographic work for the magazine El maestro rural published by the Secretariat of Education. She became a great friend of both Frida Kahlo and Maria Izquierdo.
Visit The Snite Museum of Art at : http://www.nd.edu/~sniteart/
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