© Colette Urbajtel/Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, SC.
Currently not on view
Obrero en huelga, asesinado (Striking Worker, Assassinated),
1934, printed 1974
Manuel Álvarez Bravo, 1902–2002; born and died Mexico City, Mexico
Published by Double Elephant Press
Published by Double Elephant Press
x1991-257.10
This arresting image shows a union leader moments after he was fatally shot during a sugar-mill labor strike in Mexico.Suggesting the fragility between life and death, the glint that appears to remain in his eye is in fact a reflection of light in a pool of blood at the eye’s corner. Bravo’s placement of the comma in the title of the work helps transform the image from a mere representation of death to that of a politically motivated murder.
Information
Title
Obrero en huelga, asesinado (Striking Worker, Assassinated)
Dates
1934, printed 1974
Maker
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
18.8 × 24.5 cm (7 3/8 × 9 5/8 in.)
mount: 37.5 x 50.3 cm (14 3/4 x 19 13/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Levine
Object Number
x1991-257.10
Place Made
North America, Mexico
Signatures
Signed in graphite, lower right: M. Alvarez Bravo.
Inscription
in graphite, lower left: 42/75
in graphite, verso, lower right: 13 [portfolio number]
Culture
Techniques
Mr. and Mrs. Gerald D. Levine, New York, NY (by 1991); gift to Princeton University Art Museum.
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1991," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 51, no. 1 (1992): p. 22-78., p. 50
- Eduardo Cadava and Gabriela Nouzeilles, The Itinerant Languages of Photography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013)., fig. 33, p. 66 (illus.), plate 43
