Homenaje a Salvador Toscano

Lola Álvarez Bravo was one of a number of photographers working in twentieth-century Mexico who are now recognized as part of that country’s important artistic vanguard. She worked across genres and styles, from documentary photography to portraiture to photomontage. In gaining exposure to photography through her husband, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, she was also introduced to the work of Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, among her early influences.In the 1950s, Álvarez Bravo collaborated with writer Francisco Tario on the book Acapulco en el sueño, which documented the changes unfolding in the city. A closing photograph for the book, this photo was taken when Bravo was boating in a lagoon and spotted a dead bird. She brought it ashore, placing it on the beach, and photographed it many times. Upon learning that her close friend and fellow artist Salvador Toscano had died in a plane crash that day, she titled the photograph to honor him.The image is both elegant and elegiac in the way it contrasts the bright whites of the feathers against the dark grays of the sand, and likens the ripple of feathers to those of the marked shore. Questions of temporality and mortality adhere to the beautiful, lifeless creature. The angles of the bird—the corner formed by the legs and the rugged swoops from head to wing—suggest its placement by the photographer, that the image was staged. At the same time, Álvarez Bravo’s chance encounter with the bird points to the significance she drew from everyday occurrences and images.-Cecilia Lu, Class of 2022