{
"data": {
"id": 165140,
"accession_number": "2007.142",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Ladder of Ladders, 1931. Manuel \u00c1lvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902\u20132002). Gelatin silver print; image: 24.4 x 18.3 cm (9 5/8 x 7 3/16 in.); mounted: 30 x 23 cm (11 13/16 x 9 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 2007.142. \u00a9 Colette Urbajtel/ Archivo Manuel \u00c1lvarez Bravo, S.C",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Ladder of Ladders",
"creation_date": "1931",
"creation_date_earliest": 1931,
"creation_date_latest": 1931,
"artists_tags": [
"Latine and Hispanic Artists",
"male"
],
"culture": [
"Mexico, 20th century"
],
"technique": "gelatin silver print",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "PH - Mexican",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 24.4 x 18.3 cm (9 5/8 x 7 3/16 in.); Mounted: 30 x 23 cm (11 13/16 x 9 1/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.244,
"height_inch": 9,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.625,
"width": 0.183,
"width_inch": 7,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.1875
},
"mounted": {
"height": 0.3,
"height_inch": 11,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.23,
"width_inch": 9,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 Colette Urbajtel/ Archivo Manuel \u00c1lvarez Bravo, S.C",
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on recto of mount: \"Manuel Alvarez Bravo (signed)\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
},
{
"inscription": "Written in brown ink on verso of print: cajas para muertes grandes y chicas and MAlvarez Bravo/Mexico",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 335815,
"title": "Focus on Minotaure: the Animal-Headed Review",
"description": "Focus on Minotaure: the Animal-Headed Review. Mus\u00e9e Rath (October 17, 1987-January 31, 1988); Mus\u00e9e d'Art Moderne de Paris (March 17-May 29, 1988).",
"opening_date": "1987-10-17T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 335716,
"title": "Andre Breton: La Beaute Convulsive",
"description": "Andre Breton: La Beaute Convulsive. Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou (April 25-August 26, 1991).",
"opening_date": "1991-04-25T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 227242,
"title": "La R\u00e9volution surr\u00e9aliste",
"description": "La R\u00e9volution surr\u00e9aliste. Centre national d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris cedex O4, France (organizer) (March 6-June 24, 2002).",
"opening_date": "2002-03-06T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 335720,
"title": "Surrealismus 1919- 1944",
"description": "Surrealismus 1919- 1944. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (July 20-November 24, 2002).",
"opening_date": "2002-07-20T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 203169,
"title": "Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography",
"description": "Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19, 2014-January 11, 2015).",
"opening_date": "2014-10-19T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 383281,
"title": "Stories from Storage",
"description": "Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).",
"opening_date": "2021-02-06T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "The artist, Mexico City",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Collection of Andr\u00e9 Breton [1896-1966], Paris",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "(Calmels Cohen Auction, Paris, 2003)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "2003",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "David Raymond [b.1979], New York, NY",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "2007",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": 5
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Manuel Alvarez Bravo encouraged viewers to discover their own meanings in his pictures.",
"description": "Manuel \u00c1lvarez Bravo captured unusual scenes of everyday life in his home country of Mexico. In the three photographs included here, each focuses on isolated fragments of urban iconography through storefronts and billboards. Ladder of Ladders strikes a particularly dark note. The workshop pictured here manufactured caskets for children at a time when the infant mortality rate in Mexico City was 75%. The stacked coffins just inside the shop\u2019s doorway formally play on light and darkness in the same way the photograph\u2019s subject matter metaphorically references the tension between life and death in the city.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60780960"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Spies, Werner. La re\u0301volution surre\u0301aliste: exposition pre\u0301sente\u0301e au Centre Pompidou, Galerie 1, 6 mars-24 juin 2002. Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2002.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Spies, Werner. Surrealismus 1919-1944: die surrealistische Revolution : Dali, Max Ernst, Magritte, Miro, Picasso--. Du\u0308sseldorf: K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2002.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Breton, Andre\u0301, Agne\u0300s Angliviel de La Beaumelle, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, and Claude Schweisguth. Andre\u0301 Breton, la beaute\u0301 convulsive: Muse\u0301e national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou. Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 1991.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E. Hinson, Ian Walker, and Lisa Kurzner. Forbidden Games: Surrealist and Modernist Photography : the David Raymond Collection in the Cleveland Museum of Art. 2014.",
"page_number": "cat no. 24, p. 51",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Andre Breton: 42, rue Fontaine, no. 5047. Paris: Calmels Cohen, 2003.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2007.142",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "John L. Severance Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 165140,
"creators": [
{
"id": 192,
"description": "Manuel \u00c1lvarez Bravo (Mexican, 1902\u20132002)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Manuel Alvarez Bravo Mexican, 1902-2002\r\n\r\nBorn in Mexico City, Manuel Alvarez Bravo has achieved international fame as one of Mexico's most talented photographers. In 1918 he studied painting and music at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes. After taking up the camera in 1924, Alvarez Bravo was encouraged by photographers Hugo Brehme and Edward Weston to pursue a career in the medium. Over the next several years he worked as a government employee, a photography instructor, and a photographer for the magazine Mexican Folkways. In 1931 he became a freelancer specializing in the reproduction of paintings and other works of art. A variety of jobs followed, including that of photographer and cameraman at the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producci\u00f3n Cinematogr\u00e1fica de M\u00e9xico (1943-59). He also served as cofounder, director, and chief photographer for El Fondo Editorial de la Pl\u00e1stica Mexicana, a publisher of fine art books (1959-80).\r\n\tAlvarez Bravo has been awarded the National Arts Prize of Mexico (1975), named an honorary member of the Mexican Academy of Arts (1980), made an Officier des Arts et Lettres in France (1981), and received the Hasselblad Prize (1984). He has had numerous individual exhibitions at venues throughout the world, including the Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (1934, 1968, 1972), the Art Institute of Chicago (1943, 1974), the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (1990), and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu (1992).\r\n\tAlvarez Bravo's personal work is deeply rooted in Mexican culture, as were the paintings of his friend Diego Rivera and the other Mexican muralists. Like them, he has focused on his country and its people to create straightforward, evocative images. Alvarez Bravo lives in Mexico City. M.M.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1902",
"death_year": "2002",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2007-02-26T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1931,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1931",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:52:43.945000"
}
}