Graciela Iturbide

Juchitán, México, 1985

Graciela Iturbide Biography

Graciela Iturbide was born in Mexico City in 1942, the eldest of thirteen children in a traditional Catholic family. In 1969, at the age of twenty-seven, she enrolled at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, part of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, intending to become a film director. There she studied under Manuel Álvarez Bravo, the pioneering Mexican modernist photographer. In 1970, Iturbide turned decisively toward still photography, and from 1970 to 1971 she worked as Álvarez Bravo's assistant, traveling with him throughout Mexico. She has credited him with teaching her that "there is always time for the pictures you want."

In 1978, the Ethnographic Archive of Mexico's National Indigenous Institute commissioned Iturbide to photograph the Seri people of the Sonoran Desert, resulting in the series Los que viven en la arena (Those Who Live in the Sand) and her widely reproduced image Mujer Ángel (Angel Woman), 1979. Between 1979 and 1988, she made a series of visits to Juchitán, where she photographed the way of life there "in complicity with the people." Since the early twentieth century, the women of Juchitán have been national symbols, and Iturbide's photographs capture them in public and in private as they conduct their lives in this ancient city in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The series documents a culture in which women hold central economic and social roles, and in which diverse gender identities and sexualities are embraced. The photographs reflect Iturbide's distinctive approach, combining the sensibilities of documentary with moments of dreamlike intensity and constructed imagery.