Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1902–2002
Laughing Mannequins (Maniquís riendo)
INV-9215
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Mexican, 1902–20021930
Laughing Mannequins (Maniquís riendo)
Manuel Alvarez Bravo Mexican, 1902–2002 →gelatin silver (developing-out-paper) prphotographic process
Date
1930
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 18.7 × 24.1 cm (7 3/8 × 9 1/2 in.); Mount: 40.9 × 32.7 cm (16 1/8 × 12 7/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Julien Levy Collection, gift of Jean Levy and the estate of Julien Levy
In April 1935, New York gallerist Julien Levy included this photograph in the exhibition Documentary and Anti-Graphic Photographs, which brought the work of Manuel Alvarez Bravo together with that of Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson. For Levy, the “anti-graphic” photograph renounced conventional fine-art qualities—rich tonality, sharp focus, and clear description—to achieve something that was “dynamic, startling, and inimitable.” Alvarez Bravo’s photograph of cardboard mannequins at an open-air market in Mexico City exemplifies this ideal by evoking seemingly unpremeditated associations within a mundane setting. The imagination, stimulated by such a sight, is liberated through what the Surrealist André Breton called “objective chance.” As the title of this work suggests, a reversal of potentialities operates here: the stall keepers and their customers are listless and uninterested, whereas the inanimate cardboard women floating in the air engage the viewer with vivacious smiles and alluring gazes.
Also notable
Works in the same vein
