Lola Alvarez Bravo  (Mexican, 1907-1993) 

Lola Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1907–1993) was one of the first female Mexican photographers to achieve success in her field. Born Dolores Martínez, she married fellow photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902–2002) in 1925, and began to learn the basics of photography by working as his assistant. The couple was associated with fellow Mexican artists Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. After the couple divorced in the 1930s, Álvarez Bravo turned to photography as a means to support herself and her son and embarked on a successful career, focusing mainly on portraiture and street photography.

Her work was documentary in style, yet bordered on the surreal, always capturing the life and spirit of Mexico. In 1944, Álvarez Bravo had her first solo exhibition at Mexico City’s Palace of Fine Arts. This was followed by numerous group and solo shows. From 1951 to 1958, she ran her own gallery based in Mexico City, during which time she presented her friend Frida Kahlo’s (Mexican, 1907–1954) only solo exhibition in Mexico during her lifetime.

Álvarez Bravo continued her photography work until the late 1980s, when failing eyesight caused her to give it up. The majority of her work, over 200 photographs, is in the collection of the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona. Since the early 1990s, Álvarez Bravo has been exhibited in group and solo shows at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C. She was also the subject of two retrospective exhibitions: Lola Alvarez Bravo: In Her Own Light at Americas Society Art Gallery in New York (1996) and Lola Alvarez Bravo: Fotografias Selectas 1934-1985 at the Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaño in Mexico City, Mexico (1992). Her work has been published in two monographs entitled Lola Álvarez Bravo: In Her Own Light (1994) and Lola Álvarez Bravo (2006).