About this artwork
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.
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Status
- On View, Gallery 1
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Department
- Photography and Media
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Artist
- Manuel Alvarez-Bravo
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Title
- Laughing Mannequins (Maniquís riendo)
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Place
- Mexico (Artist's nationality)
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Date
- Made 1930
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Medium
- Gelatin silver print
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Inscriptions
- Inscribed recto, on mount, lower right, in graphite: "Muelvarez Bravo"; verso unchecked
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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.)
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Credit Line
- Julien Levy Collection, gift of Jean Levy and the estate of Julien Levy
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Reference Number
- 1988.157.8
Extended information about this artwork
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