![Classic Theme/[Tema Clásico]](/api/proxy-image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.getty.edu%2Fiiif%2Fimage%2Fb5488b4b-c127-4785-af98-96692ce386c8%2Ffull%2F808%2C%2F0%2Fdefault.jpg)
Getty Museum
Classic Theme/[Tema Clásico]
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
- 1942–1946
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- Mexican
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 7f358ce0-e584-41d3-abdd-2aa996fac6e8
Manuel Alvarez Bravo directed this eerie but provocative arrangement of a skeleton clutching a dagger. He included clues, a pearl necklace and earrings, to inform the viewer that the subject is a female. The model for this scene, Doris Heydn, Alvarez Bravo's second wife, holds the end of a dagger near the brooch bearing the word *amada*, which means "beloved." By using the X-Ray process, Alvarez Bravo succeeded in penetrating her exterior flesh and capturing the interior landscape of her body.
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