Lola Álvarez Bravo archive

Lola Álvarez Bravo was born Dolores Martínez de Anda in 1903 in Lagos de Moreno, a small city in Jalisco on Mexico's Pacific coast. She moved to Mexico City as a young child, after her mother left the family under mysterious circumstances. Her father died when she was a young teenager, and she was then sent to live with the family of her half brother. It was here that she met the young Manuel Álvarez Bravo, a neighbor. They married in 1925 and moved to Oaxaca where Manuel was an accountant for the federal government.

Manuel had taken up photography as an adolescent; he taught Lola and they took pictures together in Oaxaca. Manuel also taught Lola how to develop film and make prints in the darkroom. Lola became pregnant but before she gave birth, they returned to Mexico City, where their son, Manuelito, was born in 1927.

As he became more serious about pursuing a career in photography, she acted as his assistant, although she also harbored a desire to become a photographer in her own right. In 1934 Álvarez Bravo's marriage came to an end; the couple separated and were divorced 15 years later, although she decided to maintain the Álvarez Bravo name.

Álvarez Bravo taught as well as worked in a government archive to support herself, but she also continued to experiment with photography and in 1936 received her first real commission photographing the colonial choir stalls of a former church.

Inspired by such photographers as Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, Álvarez Bravo established a successful independent career. For 50 years, she photographed a wide variety of subjects, making documentary images of daily life in Mexico's villages and city streets and portraits of great leaders from various countries.

Álvarez Bravo's first one-woman exhibition was held at Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts in 1944; numerous solo and group shows followed. From 1951 through 1958, she directed her own Mexico City art gallery, La Galería de Arte Contemporáneo, where in 1953 Frida Kahlo had her only one-woman exhibition in her native country during her lifetime. In addition, Álvarez Bravo taught photography at the prestigious Academia de San Carlos in the Mexican capital. A major retrospective of her work was held in Mexico City in 1992, although the artist had stopped making new work three years earlier because of failing eyesight.