Essay Parables of jarring reality
By TED PARKS
Los Angeles
Lurking behind avant-garde
juxtaposition of shapes in the images of Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez
Bravo is the jarring edge of reality.
Alvarez Bravo, who launched his career in the artistic fervor of
post-Revolutionary Mexico, is generally considered one of the masters of
20th-century photography. He turns 100 on Feb. 4.
Optical Parables, a show exhibiting nearly 100 of his
photographs, some rarely displayed, opened last month at the J. Paul Getty
Museum in Los Angeles.
Alvarez Bravos long career links a fascination with artistic
form to powerful if sometimes subtle social commentary.
When Alvarez Bravo was developing his craft, Mexico had become a
Mecca for post-World War I artists and intellectuals eager to observe attempts
to implement the social vision of the Mexican Revolution. The Mexico of Alvarez
Bravo is the Mexico of Diego Rivera, Sergei Eisenstein, even Trotsky, who was
murdered there.
Encouraged by avant-garde photographers like Tina Modotti,
companion of Edward Weston, Alvarez Bravo rendered the gritty urban environment
of Mexico City where he was born in images that show both social awareness and
acute aesthetic sensitivity.
The shows title comes from a single photograph,
Optical Parable, made in 1931. The plural Optical
Parables of the overall exhibition mirrors the questions the image raises
about the process of seeing and the power of images.
The parable of the picture is about the
unreliability of looking, about ... the alteration of viewpoint, and therefore
about the nature of photography itself, according to a new Getty book
about Alvarez Bravo. The photograph suggests theres double meaning
in everything, added exhibition co-curator Mikka Gee Conway.
Alvarez Bravo printed the negative backwards, reversing the
letters on the storefront and signs as if viewers were looking at the image in
a mirror. Even the name plays tricks. The Spanish word parábola
also means parable. The curved figure of the parabola is
obvious in the repeated image of the human eye in the photograph.
Some photographs in the exhibition deal with religious themes,
some directly, some less so. As an example of the first category, the 1942
Cross of Chalma captures a roadside shrine in an area famous for
miracles in the colonial period and still the site of pilgrimages.
For the Sheeps Wool, from 1932, uses Christian
iconography in a more subtle way. The photograph shows a dead sheep at the
roads edge, the diagonal line of the curb framing the animals
lifeless shape. Originally displayed in a 1940 Surrealist exhibition, the image
transforms the animal into a sort of dirty, urban paschal lamb lying dumb on a
Mexican street.
Two thematically dissimilar photographs displayed together in the
exhibition dramatically illustrate the interplay of aesthetics and social
commentary in Alvarez Bravos work.
The subjects of Striking Worker Murdered and the
The Good Reputation Sleeping, both well-known images by the Mexican
master, could hardly seem more different. The first, dating from 1934, shows a
young man, dead, lying in a pool of blood. The second, from 1938, is a female
nude.
Despite the apparent contrasts, however, the two photographs
reveal striking similarities. Both the slain worker and the nude model recline,
the young man bathed in blood, the woman awash in sunlight. The workers
arm forms an X-shape with the line etched into the dirt by his blood. The model
makes a similar shape by crossing one leg over the other.
The nude is an attractive young woman, her upper body bare, her
middle partly covered by a light-colored bandage. And the shocking sight of the
freshly murdered striker doesnt obscure the young mans
paradoxically handsome features. He had a very youthful body, face, and
hand, Alvarez Bravo is reported to have said. I think his name was
Rosendo.
Juxtaposing the slain worker and lush nude might be seen as
trivializing the brutality behind the photograph of the murdered striker. Yet
the two images show how form and content are inextricably linked in Alvarez
Bravos work, the attention to the elements of pictorial composition
highlighting aspects of the social realities he portrayed.
The stuff of Mexican life after the Revolution -- its storefronts,
sidewalks, people, and rural scenes -- provides the raw material for Alvarez
Bravos play with pattern and form.
Several photographs in the exhibition demonstrate Alvarez
Bravos keen interest in the theme of work.
Among these, Workers of the Tropics portrays
agricultural workers standing cramped in what appears the bed of a farm truck.
While the photograph documents a slice of the laborers day, the picture
is about more than farm work.
With the vehicle emerging from behind palm trees, Alvarez Bravo
frames the workers behind the repeating patterns of the fronds, the lines
echoing the metal ribs of the vehicles grille.
The overpowering leaves, accentuated by the photographs
composition, dwarf the workers and place their labor squarely in its tropical
context.
An equally striking image, Fire Workers, shows two
laborers clad head to foot in fire-resistant suits. The protective clothing,
complete with headgear, converts the workers into otherworldly automatons. The
photograph not only suggests the fascination with the machine in the early
20th-century avant-garde, but sparks reflection on the impact of work on human
beings.
Photographs in the exhibition by photographers contemporary with
Alvarez Bravo illustrate influences in the Mexican masters
development.
Tina Modottis 1927 Hands Resting on a Tool and
Alvarez Bravos 1931 Study of Tamayos Hands betray
similarities but also serve as reminder of the importance of vision underlying
the entire Alvarez Bravo show.
Modottis image shows a laborers rough hands resting on
a shovel handle. Beaming down from directly overhead, what appears to be a
noonday sun highlights the weathered creases in the workers fingers.
Alvarez Bravos photograph, however, focuses on the hands of
Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo. The object the two photographs reproduce is the
same. But instead of the hardened texture of the worker, Alvarez Bravo shows
the smooth skin of the artist.
The contrast suggests the paradox of the wider exhibition.
Nurtured by ideas imported from the high culture of the industrialized world
between the World Wars, Alvarez Bravo left compelling images of his native
Mexico struggling to redefine itself artistically and politically after the
Revolution.
The Getty exhibition provides carefully crafted glimpses into
Mexican life as it documents the development of that countrys greatest
photographer.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Optical Parables runs through
Feb. 17 at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Ted Parks writes from Malibu, Calif.
Related Web Site J.Paul Getty
Museum www.getty.edu
National Catholic Reporter, December 28,
2001
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