Manuel Alvarez Bravo

In this Surrealist-inspired photograph, Manuel Alvarez Bravo presents a nude model lying in direct sunlight, swathed in bandages and surrounded by star cacti. Her bandages, according to the artist, are meant to evoke an injured dancer preparing for rehearsal. The woman pictured here is Alicia, a figure model at the Academy of San Carlos, Mexico’s oldest art school, where Alvarez Bravo taught during the late 1930s. This dream-like image was originally commissioned by André Breton, a leader of the Paris-based Surrealist movement, as a cover photograph for the catalogue of an upcoming International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City. However, censors ultimately forbid the photo from being printed on the catalog cover because of its graphic display of nudity.