Carrizo y Tele (Reed and Television)

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Artist/Maker Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902 - 2002)

Publisher Acorn Editions Ltd. (Geneva, Switzerland)

Date1976 (printed c. 1977, published 1979)

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 6 13/16 × 9 1/4 in. (17.3 × 23.5 cm) Sheet: 7 15/16 × 9 15/16 in. (20.2 × 25.2 cm)

Credit LineGift of Jon M. Kaufman, Class of 1948

Object number1980.2.1

Not on view

DescriptionOne of Mexico’s best-known photographers, Manuel Alvarez Bravo became interested in photography as a teenager, during the Mexican Revolution of the second decade of the twentieth century. Although not formally trained, he learned from the German photographer Hugo Brehme, who then lived in Mexico City. During the 1920s and 1930s, he became acquainted with the Mexican artists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and Rufino Tamayo as well as with the Italian photographer Tina Modotti. He was also influenced by the work of Pablo Picasso and the American photographers Edward Weston and Paul Strand. “Influences are mutual,” Bravo once said. “They occur the moment there is a relationship, a similarity in the way of thinking. I had already absorbed the influences of Weston and of Tina, of [Albert] Renger-Patzsch and Hugo Brehme, of music, Dostoyevsky, and of the sugar skulls sold from the stalls on the Alameda on All Saints’ Day. I was already formed. So the question of influence is very complicated.” As in Carrizo y Tele (Reed and Television), Bravo often juxtaposed the natural and the artificial, resulting in a surreal sense of the uncanny. In 1940, the writer André Breton featured Bravo’s work in an exposition of Surrealism in Mexico City, although Bravo did not consider himself a Surrealist per se. Over the course of his career, he remained interested in the power of icons and iconography and in the Indigenous cultures of his homeland. In 1980, Jon M. Kaufman, Class of 1948, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Hamilton, donated this work to the College in a portfolio of fifteen of Bravo’s photographs. (SOURCE: Alcauskas, INNOVATIVE APPROACHES, HONORED TRADITIONS, 2017)

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Additional Details

Exhibition History 2017
Clinton, NY (Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College). "Innovative Approaches, Honored Traditions: The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Five Years, Highlights from the Permanent Collection," September 9 - December 10, 2017 (cat. no. 104, illus.).

Provenance 1980: Hamilton College (Edward W. Root Art Center), by gift of Jon M. Kaufman.

Markings Stamp: "Agfa [photo paper brand name]" printed repeatedly on verso.

Published References Katherine D. Alcauskas, INNOVATIVE APPROACHES, HONORED TRADITIONS: THE RUTH AND ELMER WELLIN MUSEUM OF ART AT FIVE YEARS, HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION (Clinton, NY: Wellin Museum of Art, 2017), p. 230.

Signature Signed "M. Alvarez Bravo" on verso at lower right corner in pencil.

Inscribed "Carrizo y tele" at lower left corner in pencil; "México" on verso at lower right in pencil.