The Hasselblad award was presented for the fourth time on Wednesday 19 September 1984. The award winner, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, received the award from Her Royal Highness Princess Désirée, at a ceremony held in the sculpture hall of the Göteborg art museum. The award sum was USD 20,000. In conjunction with the ceremony a small number of the award winner’s photographs were shown at the Göteborg Art Museum as part of a major exhibition of the work of Latin American photographers at the art museum.

No citation was made in 1984. Below is a summary of the press release and the statement about Manuel Alvarez Bravo published in Hasselblad Center’s exhibition catalogue “Nine Masters of Photography”.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo has long been esteemed one of the renewers of contemporary photography. His work is mainly known for its symbolism, its sense of lyricism and its iconography, rooted in the Mexican history and cultural traditions. He has made Mexican culture vividly known to the rest of the world. The typical Alvarez Bravo photograph is direct and unmanipulated. He is successful owing to his loyalty to and mastery of the formal elements of light, tone and, composition. At the same time his works are powerfully symbolic. This made Alvarez Bravo a foreground figure for several generations of great Latin American photographers.

Photo: M. Lindberg