Obrero en Huelga, Asesinado (Striking Worker, Assassinated)
A stark and haunting gelatin silver print by Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, this image depicts the lifeless body of a slain striking worker, rendered with unflinching documentary clarity. Bravo's masterful use of light and shadow transforms a scene of brutal political violence into a meditation on mortality, sacrifice, and social injustice in post-revolutionary Mexico. The photograph stands as one of the most powerful works in Latin American documentary photography, bearing witness to the deadly consequences faced by laborers who dared to challenge oppressive power structures.
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print, printed circa 1970s.
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Photographs
November 18, 2014
More by Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Artists in conversation
Tina Modotti
Italian · b. 1896
Modotti worked in Mexico during the same post-revolutionary period using gelatin silver prints to document labor, political struggle, and social injustice with the same unflinching documentary clarity and poetic use of light and shadow seen in this photograph.
Dorothea Lange
American · b. 1895
Lange's social documentary photography shares this work's commitment to bearing witness to suffering and political violence through stark monochrome imagery that transforms human tragedy into powerful meditations on dignity, mortality, and systemic injustice.
Weegee
American · b. 1899
Weegee's gelatin silver documentary photographs of violent death and social marginalization in urban settings share the same unflinching confrontation with mortality and brutal realism that defines this image of the assassinated striking worker.
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