Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Museum Manuel Alvarez
Bravo’s photo, "The Crouched Ones", is now showing at the
J. Paul Getty Museum through February 2002.
By Anthony Bromberg
Daily Bruin Reporter
Click. A young man walks down a dusty street in Mexico that at
one time would have been overlooked by Montezuma’s pyramid.
On the street he passes through a scene of vendors, stores and
signs. Click. He moves through his home, through the city, and
there his eyes see things. A tombstone covered with plants. A
female nude bandaged around her pelvic area. A tree above its own
shadow. A man, a strike-leader, dead. Click. Click. Click.
Click.
“If you try to describe the subject in words it
doesn’t sound like much,” said Mikka Gee Conway, the
curatorial assistant for the Department of Photographs at the J.
Paul Getty Museum.
The essence of modern photography is now blinked into existence
within the walls of the Getty Museum. In “Manuel Alvarez
Bravo: Optical Parables” they have collected over a hundred
of Bravo’s rarer works in an effort to allow the Los Angeles
public another look at the Mexican great’s photos. It is
something both speechless and soundless, an experience that is
distinctly visual and can only be reached with the viewing of the
photographs themselves.
In the past the Getty has had more than one Bravo exhibit, but
this one makes them especially happy because it coincides with the
man’s 100th birthday, according to Deborah Griffin, director
of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Click.
This display offers a varied selection of his work, which spans
his prolific career dating mostly from the 1920s through the
’70s, and provides insight into a particularly philosophical
and artistic view of both Mexican and human culture. Bravo has been
and continues to be best known for these photographs of his
homeland.
“It’s sort of an inescapable fact. He never traveled
to photo other places. He’s happy in Mexico City,”
Conway said. “It came out of the fact that he was born in
Mexico, grew up in Mexico “¦ it was the subject matter at
hand.”
The all black and white photos are hung simply along the
pristine white walls of the Getty and allow the onlooker solitude,
amongst the massive rooms, to be drawn into the vortex that the
world created by the richly gray photographs. Click.
“A reproduction is merely reproduction, the thing is the
real thing,” said Weston Naef, the curator of photographs at
the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Naef rushes back and forth excitedly between the rooms of
photographs, finding things in each through the lenses of his
glasses that is worthy of comment, flickering back and forth from
one to the next. Click.
“This picture’s never before been reproduced “¦
It’s one of my favorites,” Naef said. “This
picture is so wonderful, because it transforms a useful object into
a symbol.”
The idea seems to be that Bravo’s art lies in his ability
to create images, which engage the viewer in their contradictions,
according to Naef. The ambiguity of his themes emanate from his
titles, which often pull from literary sources and are steeped in
symbolism.
“You need to give the work some time,” Conway said.
“There’s so much complexity in the work, I’m
constantly finding new things, re-interpreting.”
Click. Bravo’s ability to shy away from explicit
statements about his work make them especially appealing. The piece
from which the exhibit takes its title encompasses this idea
equivocally and sends it through the exhibit as a whole.
“It’s about the act of viewing “¦ it’s
something he addresses repeatedly in his work,” Conway said.
“You are somehow being made the subject of the
photograph.” Click.
There will be a book of Bravo photographs as well, and a number
of talks related to the exhibit provided by the Getty. The images
available for viewing are those of light and dark spanning a
lifetime of a man who with vigor has taken almost a hundred years
from the earth thus far, and left his mark on a culture that left
its mark on his photos. Click.
“They’re pictures that deserve to be looked
at,” Conway said. “I hope people come, and come back
again.”
ART: “Manuel Alvarez Bravo: Optical
Parables” will be at the Getty until Feb. 17, 2002. Admission
is free and parking is $5. Call (310) 440-7300 for more
information.