A native of Lagos de Moreno, a small city in Jalisco on Mexico's Pacific coast, Dolores (Lola) Martínez Vianda grew up to be one of that country's first professional women photographers. Her parents moved to Mexico City when she was very young. Orphaned at eight, she was raised by relatives and in 1925 married the young Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who had been her friend and neighbor for many years. The newlyweds spent a year in Oaxaca, in central Mexico, where Lola assisted her husband in the darkroom and began taking her own pictures. The couple's son, Manuelito, was born in 1927; he also became a professional photographer. Lola and Manuel came to know many of the most important Mexican artists of the day, including the painters José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo.

In 1934 Alvarez Bravo's marriage came to an end; the couple separated and were divorced 15 years later. Meanwhile, inspired by such photographers as Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, Lola established a successful independent career. For the next 50 years, Alvarez Bravo photographed a wide variety of subjects, making documentary images of daily life in Mexico's villages and city streets and portraits of great leaders from various countries. She also experimented with photomontage.

Alvarez Bravo's first one-woman exhibition was held at Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts in 1944; numerous solo and group shows followed. From 1951 through 1958, she directed her own Mexico City art gallery, where in 1953 Frida Kahlo had her only one-woman exhibition in her native country during her lifetime. In addition, Alvarez Bravo taught photography at the prestigious Academia de San Carlos in the Mexican capital. A major retrospective of her work was held in Mexico City in 1992, although the artist had stopped making new work three years earlier because of failing eyesight.