It’s a famous picture, of a girl peeking into a window, and seems almost like a happy accident, a case of the photographer being in the right place at the right time. If so, that timing was nearly miraculous, due to the beauty in its formal composition. The circle of the hat echoes the circle of the window, while both offset the relentless diamonds on the wall. It succeeds in feeling like street photography and like an intricately composed image all at once.
The image, by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, is part of“Mexican Photography from the Gallery’s Collection,” a small exhibition with surprising breadth, running now through mid-November on the fourth floor of Yale University Art Gallery on Chapel Street. As the Bravo piece suggests, the works are all from several“well-known figures in Mexican photography,” who collectively“contributed to the development of photography as a modern artistic practice and a tool for social justice.”
