Getty Museum
Mar de Lágrimas (Sea of Tears)
Creator
Manuel Álvarez BravoMexican Photographer · 1902–2002
All works by this person →A self-taught photographer, Manuel Alvarez Bravo purchased his first camera at age twenty while working at a government job. His earliest success at photography came around 1925, when he won first prize in a local photographic competition in Oaxaca. He returned to Mexico City, where he had been born, and in 1927 met Tina Modotti, who introduced him to a lively intellectual and cultural environment
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1939
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- Mexican
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Photographed in Cuyutlán on the Pacific coast of the state of Colima, this cross may have symbolized for Manuel Alvarez Bravo the arrival of the Spaniards, and of Christianity, in the 1500s. Alvarez Bravo called this image *Sea of Tears*, perhaps alluding to the many tears shed by the Aztecs as they saw their numbers decrease in the wake of European wars and diseases. The driftwood in the foreground suggests a writhing human form, collapsed as if in sorrow at the foot of a cross.
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