Reva Brooks
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Reva Brooks (May 1913 – 24 January 2004) was a
Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
photographer who did much of her work in and around
San Miguel de Allende San Miguel de Allende () is the principal city in the Municipalities of Mexico, municipality of San Miguel de Allende (municipality), San Miguel de Allende, located in the far eastern part of Guanajuato, Mexico. A part of the Bajío region, the t ...
in Mexico. The
San Francisco Museum of Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art, and has b ...
chose Reva Brooks as one of the top 50 women photographers in history.


Career

Reva Silverman was born in
Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...
,
Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...
in May 1913. Her parents, Moritz Silverman and Jenny Kleinberg had immigrated to Canada from Poland. Moritz arrived in Toronto in 1905 and began work in the Jewish garment district on
Spadina Avenue Spadina Avenue (, less commonly ) is one of the most prominent streets in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Running through the western section of downtown, the road has a very different character in different neighbourhoods. Spadina Avenue runs south ...
, and after three years had saved enough money to send for Jenny, whom he married at once. Moritz Silverman set himself up in a tailoring and pressing shop, where Reva and her six siblings were raised. In 1935, she married the artist
Frank Leonard Brooks Leonard Brooks (7 November 1911 – 20 November 2011) was a Canadian artist. Biography Born in London, England, Brooks arrived in Canada in 1912. He studied art at Central Technical School, then the Ontario College of Art and with Frank Jo ...
. While they were on a trip to San Miguel de Allende she took up photography. The couple were early members of what became a well-known colony of artists in that town. They arrived in 1947, planning to stay for a year while Frank Brooks studied painting, and eventually stayed for fifty years. On 12 August 1950 Leonard and Reva Brooks, as well as Stirling Dickinson and five other American teachers, were deported from Mexico. The official reason was that they did not have proper work visas but the cause may have been a falling out with the owner of a rival art school. Leonard Brooks managed to get the order lifted so they could return through his contact with General Ignacio M. Beteta, to whom he had once given advice on painting and whose brother Ramón Beteta Quintana was an influential politician at the national level.


Work

In September–October 1950, before the official opening of the
Instituto Allende The Instituto Allende is a visual arts school in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The institute provides a range of courses, and offers a BA in Visual Arts and an MA in Fine arts in association with the Universidad de Guanajuato. Its courses and d ...
in San Miguel, it held an exhibition of the work of local artists. Works by both Leonard and Reva Brooks were included in this show. Reva Brooks` photography was first recognized and praised by
Minor White Minor Martin White (July 9, 1908 – June 24, 1976) was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator. White made photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subject matter. They showed technical mastery and a strong sense o ...
in 1952 when Reva’s portrait of solemn-faced ''Anciana'' (Dona Chencha), was reproduced on the third cover of ''Aperture'', a nascent publication with a mission to be a forum for the advancement of excellence in photography. That same year, Reva Brooks sold one of her most famous photographs, ''Confrontation'', a picture taken by Brooks in 1948 of a mother grieving over her dead child, to
Edward Steichen Edward Jean Steichen (; March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter and curator and a pioneer of fashion photography. His gown images for the magazine ''Art et Décoration'' in 1911 were the first modern ...
, director of photography at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
(MOMA) in New York, and in 1955 the work was included in the MOMA's ''
The Family of Man ''The Family of Man'' was an ambitious exhibition of 503 photographs from 68 countries curated by Edward Steichen, the director of the New York City Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) department of photography. According to Steichen, the exhibitio ...
'' exhibition, one of the first major exhibitions of photography. (It was included in a section addressing the idea of “universal death” - the consequence of the hydrogen bomb, still a postwar fear in public consciousness). Much enlarged from the original print, it was the first one in view among the work of well-known photographers, such as
Roman Vishniac Roman Vishniac (; ; August 19, 1897 – January 22, 1990) was a Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. A major archive of his work was housed at t ...
. In 1975, ''Dead Child'', of the boy in ''Confrontation'', was included in her series of five photographs in the exhibition ''Women of Photography: An Historical Survey'', at the
San Francisco Museum of Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art, and has b ...
. It brought Reva new attention, identifying her as the leading woman photographer in Mexico, and Canadian. Reva Brooks (with her husband Leonard) exhibited at Eaton’s Art Gallery, Toronto, in 1949. A larger forum for her work was provided by EXPO’67 in the ''International Exhibition of Photography: The Camera as Witness''. Although individual photographers remained unnamed in favour of an all-encompassing theme of optimism, Reva’s images were identifiable by subject due to their human interest. Once again, her work was seen among esteemed photographers, such as
Inge Morath Ingeborg Hermine "Inge" Morath (; 27 May 1923 – 30 January 2002) was an Austrian photographer. In 1953, she joined the Magnum Photos Agency, founded by top photographers in Paris, and became a full photographer with the agency in 1955. Morat ...
. In 1976, her work was included in an exhibition at the
National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's National museums of Canada, national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the List of large ...
, and in 1989, at the
Art Gallery of Windsor Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...
, Ontario. Reva Brooks` first solo show was in 1998 at the Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, followed with a joint exhibition with Leonard Brooks at the Edward Day Gallery, Kingston, Ontario. She participated in many exhibitions in Canada and abroad, such as her
retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...
at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, in 2000, with her last solo show being a retrospective at the
Art Gallery of Ontario The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO; ) is an art museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located on Dundas Street, Dundas Street West in the Grange Park (neighbourhood), Grange Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto, the museum complex takes up of phys ...
in 2002. She died in San Miguel de Allende in 2004.


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooks, Reva 1913 births 2004 deaths Photographers from Toronto Canadian photographers Canadian women photographers