Snapshots from Mexico

The exhibition,curated by Conrado Tostado Gutierrez,the cultural attaché of the Embassy of Mexico in Delhi,comprises a substantial body of images that evokes the era of the Mexican Revolution of early 1907 to 1911,the newly independent Mexico and its people. Bravo’s daughter Aurelia Alvarez Bravo and his widow Collette Urbajtel have painstakingly developed the original negatives from the photographer’s work to make this exhibition possible.

Bravo died in 2002 at the age of 100,but his photographs are a significant part of Mexico’s history. “He captured Mexico during the nationalist revolution but did not follow the larger-than-life images that painter Diego Rivera is known for. Instead,he opted for more intimate and enigmatic images that require the viewer to come close and enter the personal world of the young Mexicans on the brink of freedom,” adds Gutierrez.

He informs that Bravo began his career at the age of 18,and was heavily influenced by the Surrealist founders like Andre Breton and Man Ray. “He was a part of the Surrealist movement,” says Gutierrez.

Aurelia adds,“My father bought his first camera at the age of 20 while working at a government job. One of his preferred cameras was the second one he bought,a Century Master 25.” With this camera,we see Bravo’s early experiments with photography that include the famous image of a snail on a large pumpkin,where the pattern of a pumpkin is echoed in the shell of the snail,beautifully essaying the harmonious relationship between the two.

The images do,in fact,reflect palpable intimacy — in one image,a young Mexican girl leans on a metal railing,lost in reverie and the viewer is forced to ask,“Is she dreaming of the future?” In another image,a young Mexican boy drinks water from a tap,his face hidden. In yet another image,workers have their meal and drinks at a diner with half its shutter down,their identity is masked by the shadow thrown by the shutter,the metaphor of the faceless nature of labour is implicit in the image.

“My father used to say that photographing the works of great painters during his early days,after the Mexican Revolution,taught him attitudes,the reality and technique of art and the personal selection of details. It gave him a concentration in different ways of seeing and thinking,” says Aurelia. This explains the photographer’s classical approach to the photographic image where the geometry of form and line is echoed in each frame. Bravo also did some important portraits of painters like Frida Kahlo,Rivera and Rufino Tamayo,where he juxtaposed them with objects and textures that reflected their lives and their art.

“I remember my father saying that he never thought about making a statement but of creating something visual which can later bear a meaning that one didn’t intend to transmit — depending on the viewer’s interpretation but not necessarily on the photographer’s,” says Aurelia. That is perhaps why the images fit so well the Paz’s reading of them through his poetry.