Álvarez Bravo, Lola (née Dolores Martinez Vianda; 1907-93), Mexican photographer. Orphaned very young, she was brought up by relations. In 1925 she married Manuel Álvarez Bravo, began by helping her husband in the darkroom, and went on to share the use of their camera. (Their son Manuelito, born in 1927, also became a photographer.) Their work brought the young couple into contact with other Mexican artists, and when they separated in the mid-1930s, Lola was sufficiently established to pursue an independent career as one of Mexico's first female professional photographers. Her varied oeuvre included an extensive documentary record of everyday Mexican life, images of historical sites, and portraits of national and international figures from art and politics. Her 1944 one-woman exhibition at Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts was the first of many showings of her images. She also worked as a gallery director and photography teacher. Failing eyesight made her abandon photography in the late 1980s, but her life's achievement was marked by a retrospective exhibition in Mexico City in 1992.
— Robert Pols
Bibliography
- Sills, L., In Real Life: Six Women Photographers (2000)
