Anton BRUEHL
Australia 1900 – United States of America 1982
United States from 1919

Dolores 1932
gelatin silver photograph
Recto, matt, signed, in pencil lower right, 'Anton Bruehl'.
image 49.4 (h) x 39.6 (w) cm
Gift of American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia, Inc., New York, NY, USA, made possible with the generous support of Anton Bruehl Jr, 2006.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
NGA 2006.141

The Mexican muralist, José Clemente Orozco, felt that Bruehl had caught in his images made in Mexico the ‘strong and unique individuality of a people – a mysterious mixture of the most simple and primitive with the highest refinement’.

This image of an Indian girl that Bruehl found living in a pueblo or village was reproduced in the catalogue for the seminal show celebrating the first century of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1937. In that publication she was titled simply, Mexican child. In Photographs of Mexico Bruehl, in a gesture unusual for its time, names her and she ceases to be a faceless symbol of a timeless world. Reinforcing his personal relationship with the sitter, Bruehl can be seen reflected in Dolores’s left eye, standing beside his camera and tripod.