Manuel Alvarez Bravo "Striking Worker Murdered"
1934 Gelatin Silver 18.7x24.4cm
I chose this exposure because for one it depicts a real person in a horrific scenario. This image stood out from the rest because events like this always touch me. It shows how man will always resort to violence to prove they are the stronger being. It shows how a man can work hard and struggle to change things but can easily be struck down by their superior to strike fear into the rest. This man was a union leader of a sugar mill most likely striking to better the work environment for himself and his fellow workers. Bravo wanted to show not a hero or martyr but a sacrifice to "the gods of society" something that had to happen to improve the"well-being" of the Mexican people. Bravo set himself up so that this photo could depict the mans coffin encasing the man in this eternal frame. Manuel Alvarez Bravo was a self taught photographer born in Mexico in 1902 he started with pictorialism and then was inspired by cubism and everything offered by abstraction he started exploring modern aesthetics. Soon after he got into documentary photography and in 1943 he began doing still shots that got him into cinema. He held over 150 exhibitions when he was alive. He died in 2002 at the age of hundred.
