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Manuel Alvarez Bravo Quotes

I think that light and shadow have exactly the same duality that exists between life and death.

I think that light and shadow have exactly the same duality that exists between life and death.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Thinking, Light, Life And Death

A photographer's main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Eye, Past, Use

Shoot what you see, not what you think.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Thinking

I just get the will to do it. I don’t plan a photograph in advance… I work by impulse. No philosophy. No ideas. Not by the head but by the eyes. Eventually inspiration comes-instinct is the same as inspiration, and eventually it comes.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Photography, Philosophy, Inspiration

There is no other art with as great a democratic capacity as photography.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Photography, Art, Capacity

I give the moment permanence.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Photography, Giving, Moments

The word 'art' is very slippery. It really has no importance in relation to one's work. I work for the pleasure, for the pleasure of the work, and everything else is a matter for the critics.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Photography, Art, Matter

I think that a visual artist's philosophy develops much more freely than a writer's or a thinker's philosophy. It is not so disciplined. The photographer works with both his eyes and his mind.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Philosophy, Eye, Artist

One could think of a person who seems to have two opposing and contradictory sides to his personality; but it turns out that in the end the two sides are complementary. The same happens with an artist's work: deep down, what appear as contradictory sides are merely different registers, different aspects of the reality that the artist inhabits

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Artist, Reality, Thinking
Susan Kismaric, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1997). “Manuel Alvarez Bravo”

Before the Conquest all art was of the people, and popular art has never ceased to exist in Mexico. The art called popular is fugitive in character, with less of the impersonal and intellectual characteristics of the schools. It is the work of talent nourished by personal experience and that of the community - rather than being taken from the experiences of painters in other times and other cultures.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Art, Taken, School
Manuel Álvarez Bravo, A. D. Coleman (1987). “Manuel Álvarez Bravo”, Aperture

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