1902

Born in Mexico City on February 4th.

1908-1914

He studies elementary school at the Patricio Saénz boarding school in Tlalpan

1915

Leaves elementary school to help support his family.

1916

He is admitted at the Nation’s General Treasury.

Edward Weston arrives in Mexico, accompanied by his model, Tina Modotti

1924

He buys his first camera.

1926

He wins the first prize in a competition organized by the Feria Regional Ganadera in Oaxaca, with an image of two lovers in a boat. .

1928

His work is selected to be exhibited in the First Mexican Hall of Photography.

1929

Once Tina Modotti is expelled from Mexico, Álvarez Bravo is left in charge of photographing the works of the most important painters of the time: José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, among others.

1931

He wins the first prize in a competitions sponsored by the cement manufacturing company La Tolteca, with his image La Tolteca. Diego Rivera is one of the judges.

1932

First individual exhibition, Galería Posada, Mexico City.

1933

He meets photographer Paul Strand at the set of Redes. Years later, Paul Strand publishes a text about him in Aperture

1935

He exhibits with Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The texts on the catalogue are from Langston Hughes and Luis Cardoza y Aragón.

1938

He meets André Breton at Diego Rivera’s home.

1938-1939

He teaches photography at the Escuela Central de Artes Plásticas (Central School for Plastic Arts).

1939

André Breton publishes “Souvenir du Mexique" in the Minotaure magazine. Surrealist exhibition in Galerie Renou et Colle, Paris.

1940

He participates in the surrealist exhibition mounted by André Breton in the Gallery belonging to Inés Amor.

1943

He starts working in the national film industry, affiliating to the Section of Technicians and Manuals of the Film Industry Union. He will remain there until 1959.

1945

Diego Rivera writes for the catalogue for the exhibition of the Sociedad de Arte Moderno. Álvarez Bravo publishes his text "El arte negro” in that same catalogue. In El Hijo Prodigo (The Prodigal Son), Xavier Villaurrutia publishes the text “Manuel Álvarez Bravo”.

1949

He collaborates with José Revueltas in an experimental film, Coatlicue. José Clemente Orozco sends a letter to the Guggenheim Foundation, supporting Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s petition, praising him highly.

1957

He works as still-man in Nazarín, a film by Luis Buñuel.

1959

Together with Leopoldo Méndez, Gabriel Figueroa, Carlos Pellicer and Rafael Carrillo, he founds the Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana (Editorial Fund for the Mexican Plastics).

1964

Luis Cardoza y Aragón publishes México: pintura de hoy in the Fondo de Cultura Económica. The photographs of the murals at the Hospicio Cabañas, among others, are from Alvarez Bravo.

1966

Exhibition at the Gallery belonging to Inés Amor.

1968

Exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes commemorating four decades of Álvarez Bravo´s work. Luis Cardoza y Aragón writes the text for the catalogue; and Juan García Ponce a text on Álvarez Bravo for Cultural Olympics program.
Late seventies. He teaches at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos (University Center for Film Studies).

1971

Exhibitions in the Pasadena Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1972

Manuel Álvarez Bravo: 400 fotografías. Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. Text by Jorge Hernández Campos.

1973

He donates his personal collection of photographs and cameras to INBA (National Institute for Fine Arts). The Mexican government acquires four hundred of his photographs for the archives of the Modern Art Museum.

1974

He receives the Elias Sourasky Arts Prize.

1975

He receives the National Prize for the Arts in Mexico and a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

1978

Exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

1980

He begins forming a collection of photographs for Fundación Cultural Televisa.

1982

Octavio Paz and Manuel Álvarez Bravo publish the book Instante y revelación (thirty poems by Paz and seventy photographs by Álvarez Bravo). He is named Officier de l´Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government.

1983

He exhibits at Jerusalem's Israel Museum. Dreams, Visions, Metaphors, by Nissan N. Perez is published by the Israel Museum.

1984

He receives the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Prize (Gotemburg, Sweden).

1985

He travels to Spain to attend his exhibition at the Madrid's National Library.

1987

 Awarded the Master of Photography Prize by the International Center of Photography from New York.

1991

He receives the Hugo Erfurth International Photography Award and Agfa Gevaert Prize in Leverkusen, Germany.

1993

Named Creador Emérito by the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Council for Culture and the Arts).

1994-1995

The exhibition Evidencias de lo invisible, cien fotografías (Evidence of the Invisible, One Hundred Photographs) is presented at the Fine Arts Museum, New Delhi, Pekin's Imperial Palace and the Cultural Center in Belem, Lisbon.

1995

He receives the Gold Medal Award from the National Arts Club in New York; the Leica Medal of Excellence and the Grand Cross of Merit Order in Portugal.

1996

The Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo is opened in Oaxaca. Exhibition at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.

1997

Exhibition at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Kiyosato, Japan. Retrospective in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Variaciones, in the Centro de la Imagen (Image Center) Mexico.

1999

Exhibition of Espíritus Arbóreos. Manuel Álvarez Bravo y Octavio Paz (Arboreous Spirits. Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Octavio Paz), as part of the XXVI Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, taken from Variaciones.

2001

Retrospective at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California.

2002

National homage to Álvarez Bravo. The book Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Cien años, cien días (Manuel Álvarez Bravo, One Hundred Years, One Hundred Days) is published.
He dies in October of that year at the age of one hundred.