Looking at the Masters: Graciela Iturbide

“Something is beautiful when it touches my heart. My eyes see them, and my heart shoots them.”

Graciela Iturbide (b.1942, Mexico City) has achieved an international reputation for her black and white photographs. She has filmed in Cuba, Germany, India, Madagascar, Hungary, France, America, and Mexico. Born in Mexico City, she was introduced to photography by her father and had her first camera when she was eleven. After the death of her daughter in 1970, Iturbide studied photography at the National School of Film Arts and the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She intending to become a film director; however, when she worked with the well-known Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, she came to realize, as she stated, “Alvarez Bravo was for me, not just a photography teacher, he was a teacher in life…” 

In 1978, Iturbide was commissioned by the National Indigenous Institute of Mexico to photograph the indigenous people of Mexico. She selected the Seri Indians, a community of 500 people living in the Sonora desert along the Arizona/Mexican border. The Seri were persecuted by the Spanish and the Mexicans who tried over the centuries to annihilate them.  Iturbide spent months living with the Seri to get to know them and to gain their trust. She did not want to show an outsider’s perspective as had so many photographers before her. 

 “Mujer Angel” (Gelatin Silver Print 16’’ x 20”) (Sonora Desert) was photographed on a trip with some of the Seri people to see ancient indigenous cave paintings.  The picture, like many of Iturbide’s, has a surreal quality.  The central figure and the cliff and plants create a triangle that fills the left side and entire bottom of the composition.  The dramatic figure of the Seri woman, her back to the viewer, walks into the desolate desert from the left corner of the photograph. Her long dark hair, her blouse, and her outspread arms create a silhouette against the sky. Iturbide named the photograph “Angel Woman” because “it looks as if she could fly off into the desert.” She says it was “a gift life gave me. There was the music from her cassette and her hair was all tangled up.” In contrast with the old-world culture that the Seri people have managed to maintain for centuries is the modern tape recorder she holds in her right hand. She traded the tape recorder with an American tourist for Seri crafts.

 

 

Iturbide was invited in 1979 to photograph the Zapotec people of Juchitan, a small town on the coast of Mexico in the Valley of Oaxaca. She photographed the Zapotec from 1979 to 1986.  The Zapotec, known as the “inhabitants of the clouds,” are descendants of an ancient matriarchal society that existed from 500 BCE until 900 CE. Juchitan women run a successful economy based on their ability to trade. The people describe themselves as well nourished, happy, and wealthy enough.

“Our Lady of the Iguanas” (1979) (Gelatin Silver print 15’’x 13’’) fulfills the artistic parameters Iturbide set for herself: “I need to be close to the people…I need their complicity…Complicity, for me, is looking at someone and discovering that they are looking back.  If I don’t get that answering look, I don’t get results.” The photograph shows Zobeida Dias who came to the market to sell the iguanas she carried on her head in the traditional manner. Iturbide describes the moment: “Here she comes with the iguanas on her head! I could not believe it. She put the iguanas on the ground and I said: ‘One moment, please. One moment!  Please put the iguanas back.’ Only one photo from the 12 I took of her was good, because it was the only one where the iguanas raised their heads as if they were posing.” Iturbide notes that she had only 12 frames left on her film, but she managed to capture what she was looking for, that “ethereal sense of self-possession.” Zobeida is a woman of majesty and mystery. Shot from below, the figure rises prominently above the viewer’s eye level, creating a dramatic pose.

Iturbide titled the photograph “Our Lady of the Iguanas” and described the iguanas as forming a halo.  Her interpretation recognizes the prevalence of images of the Madonna and Saints on the streets and in homes and churches. The photograph has become one of the quintessential Iturbide images. When journalists asked Zobedia if she was a feminist, she answered, “Yes. When my husband died, I work, I take care of myself.”  Zobeida died in 2004, something of a celebrity.

“I always say that my camera is a pretext to get to know life and when I am behind my camera, what I see and what surprises me is what I photograph.” Iturbide’s “The Cemetery” (1988) (Juchitan 19” x’13”) depicts another reality of life with a mythical outcome. Simply put, the woman carries a bundle of firewood as she walks through a Juchitan cemetery. The centered female figure is a black silhouette against the pale rocks that form the walls of the tombs and the sky above. Just behind her is a path through the cemetery that reveals in shades of gray the depth of the tombs. In the lower third of the photograph, the earth is black, and a stack of wood and grasses in various shades from black to white ground the composition. 

Around the woman and filling the upper two-thirds of the composition are hundreds of black spots. They are a large flock of swallows, native to many places including Mexico and a major symbol from ancient times. They are messengers from the dead and bringers of hope, a happy coincidence for the photograph. For Iturbide, the birds represent freedom and independence. She often uses them symbolically in her photographs. 

Iturbide’s photographs frequently are of individuals’ faces that always make the viewer want to look longer and probe the character of the sitters. They find and celebrate the essence of the individual. “Photography for me is a ritual. To go out with the camera, to observe, to photograph the most mythological aspects of people, then to go into the darkness, to develop, to select the most symbolic images. The photographer’s job is to synthesize, to make strong and poetic work from daily life.”

Iturbide describes herself as feminist: “I am feminist. And as I am, in my photographs, my way of being is revealed. That does not mean that I deliberately do feminist photography. I do what surprises me.”  

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.