Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Dos Mujeres y la Gran Cortina con Sombras (Two Women, Large Blind, and Shadows)

Preview image of work. gelatin silver print, Dos Mujeres y la Gran Cortina con Sombras (Two Women, Large Blind, and Shadows) 9100

1979.81.5

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Dos Mujeres y la Gran Cortina con Sombras (Two Women, Large Blind, and Shadows)

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Artist

Manuel Álvarez Bravo (Mexico City, Mexico, 2/4/1902 - 10/19/2002, Mexico City, Mexico)

Title

Dos Mujeres y la Gran Cortina con Sombras (Two Women, Large Blind, and Shadows)

Creation Date

1977

Century

20th century

Dimensions

7 1/4 in. x 9 9/16 in. (18.4 cm. x 24.3 cm.)

Classification

Photographs

Creation Place

North America, Mexico

Medium and Support

gelatin silver print

Credit Line

Gift of Michael G. Frieze, Class of 1960

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

1979.81.5

Álvarez Bravo’s photographs transform social critiques into rich visual metaphors that document Mexico’s modern realities and scenes of everyday life. In this photograph, a closed store window is both a richly textured visual plane and a boundary, dividing society into those with purchasing power and the majority devoid of it. Despite sustained economic growth between 1940 and 1970, the benefits of the modernizing “Mexican Miracle” failed to reach the middle and working classes. This stratification is especially evident in Mexico’s sprawling cities. “My work is commissioned,” Alvarez Bravo once claimed, “it isn’t an explicit commission, it’s implicit as part of the society in which I live.” Elise Morano ’20 “Sin embargo había esperanza. Nuestros libros de texto afirmaban: Visto en el mapa México tiene forma de cornucopia o cuerno de la abundancia. Para el impensable año dos mil se auguraba—sin especificar cómo íbamos a lograrlo—un porvenir de plenitud y bienestar universals.” “Nevertheless, there was still hope. Our textbooks confirmed this: Mexico, as can be seen on the map, is shaped like a cornucopia, a horn of plenty. For a still unimaginable 1980, a future of plenitude and universal well-being was predicted, without specifying just how it would be achieved.” Jose Emilio Pacheco Las batallas en el desierto (1980)