The Manuel Álvarez Bravo House-Archive is honored to host the work of Bob Schalkwijk, a Dutch photographer who has made Mexico his home since the late 1950s. His first trip to Ajijic, Jalisco, in 1958 marked the beginning of a deep bond with our country, one that was consolidated with his subsequent settlement in Mexico City.

Almost in parallel, in September 1959, Manuel Álvarez Bravo made his first trip to the Netherlands, accompanied by Leopoldo Méndez and Rafael Carrillo. His mission was to supervise the editing and printing of the book Pintura Mural de la Revolución Mexicana, published by the Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana. Although brief, his stay in the city of Haarlem left a significant mark on his work, revealing his sense of wonder and curiosity toward an unfamiliar environment that, in its singularity, nonetheless maintained subtle resonances with Mexico.

In 1971, Schalkwijk was invited by Mariana Yampolsky to collaborate with eight photographs for the book Lo efímero y eterno del arte popular mexicano, also published by the FEPM. The photographic direction of the project was overseen by Álvarez Bravo, fostering a visual dialogue between the two photographers. Over the years, Schalkwijk has tirelessly documented the landscapes, faces, and traditions of Mexico, building a body of work that not only broadens our understanding of cultures, but also revalues the role of the outsider’s gaze—a gaze that, in approaching the other, ultimately becomes part of it.

Like Álvarez Bravo, Schalkwijk has witnessed the country’s many transformations. His photographic archive is an invaluable testimony to the cultural richness of Mexico and its peoples. Both photographers share a profound sensitivity toward the documentation of popular traditions, approaching their work from a humanistic perspective.

Visions of Mexico and the Netherlands celebrates the encounter between two countries through the lenses of both creators, whose works have helped strengthen the ties between their respective cultures while exploring the identities that define them.

This exhibition is also a celebration. As an active archive, we are delighted to foster this dialogue between two significant artistic trajectories and to pay tribute to the career of Bob Schalkwijk—a Dutchman who, through his camera, has expressed a constant admiration for our land. We hope that this exhibition will further strengthen the cultural bridge built by both photographers between Mexico and the Netherlands.

In his book The Hand of Good Fortune, Goran Petrović warns that there are things that can never be found if they remain forever in the same place. In the same way, an archive must be in motion, must have an outlet that accounts for the materials it safeguards, so as not to lose them in the drawer of their well-intentioned classification. One of the guiding principles of the Manuel Álvarez Bravo House-Archive is to give visibility to little-known, forgotten, and unpublished materials by the Mexican photographer, as well as to exhibit and promote young photographers who reflect on the influence and impact that this centenarian photographer has had on them.

Javier Silva is driven by an urgent need to record his daily life in order to discover within it the unusual. In chance places he finds witnesses that speak of his passage through the world and of the implications of knowing oneself through the images he captures. His work reflects an anecdotal impulse, a kind of urgency in the face of memory and its preservation while it is guarded by the present.

Javier Silva’s photography is a constant exercise in introspection. In recent years, his work has revolved around gloom, the importance of maintaining a personal archive, and the beauty that can be found in everyday life. Photography is also the instrument he has chosen to translate his train of thought and to overcome the fear of being devoured by the darkness accumulated behind memories.

Manuel Álvarez Bravo goes in pursuit of discovery—of that which gives meaning and form to all the creative impulses that spring from his inexhaustible sources of inspiration. This pursuit became a perpetual documentation of everyday life over the years.

The cataloguing and study of his archive have made it possible to uncover works that reveal his profound knowledge of his surroundings, his connection with objects and the places they inhabit, his understanding of states of light, and the singular way in which he transformed the everyday into a unique moment, exclusive to his gaze.

The coincidences found between Álvarez Bravo and Silva Pérez are nothing more than references acquired within a visual culture that reaffirms that MAB’s work is embedded in the collective memory of countless generations of photographic artists, who find in his oeuvre a refuge for their personal inquiries.

The group of images that make up this exhibition are signs of a desire to perpetuate the beauty of discovery, to give space to the everyday in order to allow the unusual to enter.

Boredom lay in wait for us. But we knew that boredom is cured by the most perfect drug: curiosity.
Xavier Villaurrutia, “Un joven de la ciudad,” 1930.

When Don Manuel stored his prints, he followed a simple thematic division: city with people, city without people, countryside with people, countryside without people. His classification did not include the usual themes inherited from painting—portrait, landscape, still life, abstraction… not even nudes—except for the occasional box set aside for a specific project, such as a book.

This classification may stem from his own way of characterizing or describing the world that surrounded him from childhood, as a native of the heart of Mexico City who, after traveling through vast expanses of countryside, attended a Marist boarding school located in the then-distant town of Tlalpan.

Álvarez Bravo explored Mexico City with curiosity and affection. He observed and recorded modernity in its streets, capturing its movement and its essence.

From 1943 to 1959 he worked in the film industry as a still photographer and cinematographer. That period influenced his later work, in which he produced a significant number of series, some outstanding examples of which we present here from the 1970s. These works reflect a narrative shaped by his experience in cinema. Using a cinematic language, Álvarez Bravo created photographic series that play with the idea of visual montage, suggesting stories with a before, a during, and an after.

Series such as The White Cloth and The Black Dog reveal his ability to arrest time, waiting for something to happen within the frame, while Multiple Walk explores the cinematic rhythm of movement in the city. Here we celebrate, through a selection, the remarkable series The Exterior Aspect, in which Álvarez Bravo’s photographs resemble small abstract black-and-white paintings and reveal a curious and by no means accidental coincidence with the rise of the Rupture movement.

Don Manuel’s interest in cinema endured throughout his life, and through it he addressed technical and aesthetic concerns that were distinct yet closely related to his photographic work. His foray into the film industry added a more contemporary dimension to his photography and contributed a unique visual narrative to his oeuvre.

Within the framework of Red de la Imagen, September 2024 – January 2025.

Talking about photography today has not changed much, despite the impressive advances digital technology has achieved. What has changed is the process of producing images. What we celebrate here is the coming together of two great poles of Mexican photography. Photography is a craft that involves using an analog camera during romantic wanderings through the streets, then entering the darkroom to print the ghosts encountered along the way. I insist on the analog camera because the analog process separates photography as an idea from photography as an object—an object prone to absorbing animality: hairs, scratches, dust. If we are lucky, we can witness its degradation and appreciate the beauty of the passage of time, that imperfect universe, the dust of this planet.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Manolo and I were students of visual arts at the Universidad Veracruzana. I remember that we were already beginning to engage in aesthetic debates about photography, as Manolo was studying photography and I, although enrolled in graphic arts, took photography courses throughout all five years of my degree. A point of convergence between us was our questioning of photographic possibilities that went beyond a documentary use of the medium. I also recall that even then Manolo’s research was closer to physics than to the conventional portraiture practiced by some of our contemporaries. It was a time when one was supposedly taught to break with tradition, when the contemporary began to function as a receptacle for ill-fated productions that vanished over time because they lacked deep roots. We believed in that idea of contemporaneity, but we never lost our connection to tradition and craft, and that is why we are here, twenty years later, navigating against the tide of trends. We have now found new friends with whom we share convergent viewpoints, forging alliances across space and time.

One afternoon, beneath Daniel Lezama’s painting from the Pulquería at los Insurgentes avenue, Claudia Perulles proposed that I review the color archive of master photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. The idea surprised me, as I felt quite distant from the master’s work, but I found the exercise compelling—breaking through those gaps and venturing into something new, seeing how the traditional becomes contemporary, and how the timeless rises above any label. The task entrusted by Perulles was to review Álvarez Bravo’s color archive, in which I discovered an Álvarez Bravo remarkably close to Manolo’s line of inquiry, despite the decades separating their respective practices. Washed-out colors, found objects, object-based performances, empty sites, ghosts leaving their traces. This exercise of revisiting master Álvarez Bravo led me to reflect that it is never too late to begin a new path with new friendships, where work itself is the most valued thing. Gilles Deleuze says something beautiful: for an idea to be new, the trick is to bring together two things that have never been together before, I believe this is such a case. Through color photography, we bring together these two great wanderers, these ghosts who show us a desolate world sustained by the beauty of color.

Nicolás Guzmán
Mexico City, february 2024