In the one hundred years of his life, Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo created images of his native country in black-and-white that are "understated nearly to the point of silence," as Arthur Ollman observed in the Los Angeles Times. Such "quotidian events," as Ollman called them, include "a dog asleep at a gate, a ladder against a wall, fresh sheets hanging on a line, a woman brushing her long hair." For Ollman, "It is amazing that [Alvarez Bravo] was even noticed at all. Yet his work has endured. Through revelations of timeless yet unremarkable moments, he identified the doors to the absolute."

As David Lyon noted in Americas, "Almost everyone knows at least one Manuel Alvarez Bravo photograph, though not necessarily as the artist's work." Lyon pointed to the oft-reproduced, somewhat surreal image of a beautiful young woman reclining nude on a sidewalk with bits of cactus around...