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In the Art Gallery: Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Dos Pares de Piernas/Two Pairs of Legs, 1928-1929
9 1/4 x 7 1/8 inches
Collection of Alvarez Urbajtel.

La Hija de los Danzantes/The Daughter of the Dancers, 1933
Silver gelatin print
9 1/4 x 6 11/16 inches
Collection of Alvarez Urbajtel

Parabola Optica/Optical Parable, 1931
9 3/4 x 7 3/8 inches
Collection of Alvarez Urbajtel

Angeles en camion/Angels in a Truck, 1930s
16x 20 inches
Collection of Alvarez Urbajtel

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The San Jose Museum of Art is celebrating Mexico's most renowned photographer, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, with Caja de Visiones/Box of Visions, an exhibit of some 50 of the artist's works from the 1920s through the 1940s. The photographs, among them Alvarez Bravo's famous portrait of Frida Khalo, will be on view from June 19 to September 11.

Alvarez Bravo, born in 1902, was a self-taught photographer whose career flourished in the fertile artistic environment that followed the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920. A peer of Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, he was influenced by both the indigenous culture of Mexico and trends from abroad.

"Over time, he refined his unique photographic technique to capture the contradictions between urban life and personal solitude," the Museum's preview of the exhibit states. "At once powerful and lyrical, Alvarez Bravo's photographs capture the soul of his native Mexico."

Alvarez Bravo died October 19, 2002, at the age of 100.