Graciela Iturbide: Photographs of Human Connection
By Betty Ann Brown
"In the end, photography for me is just an excuse to get to know the world."—Graciela Iturbide
Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide creates haunting images that portray the people, places, and events of the extraordinary cultures and geographies of her home country. Iturbide has a unique artistic practice that involves living and working with the people she chooses to photograph. Her process has made possible the strange and wonderful depictions for which she is known.
In the past, several photographers have been accused of maintaining dominance over their subjects and taking photographs. The great critic Susan Sontag famously described the camera as "a predatory weapon," a direct extension of a gun. (We "shoot" photographs, don't we? Indeed, nineteenth-century French photographer Étienne-Jules Marey invented a camera shaped like a rifle. He called it the "chronophotographic gun," 1882.) Sontag accused Diane Arbus of aesthetic exploitation, writing that Arbus focused on marginalized individuals in order to "other" them.
In compassionate contrast, Graciela Iturbide has chosen to live and work with her potential subjects for extended periods of time, becoming a welcome and active member of various Mexican communities before she even takes out her camera. Her chosen communities have ranged from the Seri Indians of the Sonoran Desert, to the Zapotecs of Oaxaca, to the urban poor of Mexico City, to the Chicanex gangs of eastern Los Angeles. Again and again, she has found what distinguishes the people of these varied communities and has portrayed them with caring insight.
Mujer Ángel, Desierto de Sonora (Angel Woman, Sonoran Desert, 1979) is one of Iturbide's best-known photographs. It presents a long-haired Seri woman charging through the desert. Like many of Iturbide's subjects, the Angel Woman straddles historical and contemporary worlds. Juxtaposed with her traditional attire — a long white skirt and a dark fitted jacket — is the modern boom box she carries. It was acquired from a US tourist and reminds us that even the most isolated indigenous people are influenced by today's mass media world.
Equally renowned is Iturbide's Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas (1979), a portrait of a Zapotec market woman carrying five large iguanas on her head like an exotic reptile hat. Indigenous women often carry their market goods on their heads, but the fierce living iguanas make a surreal millinery statement. The cultures of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca are known for their matriarchal traditions. Women there are often in charge of both their families and the local markets. Frida Kahlo was so inspired by the powerful Tehuantepec women that she adopted their traditional attire of long skirts and embroidered huipiles. (A huipil is a short square blouse made on a backstrap loom, often heavily embroidered, still worn by indigenous women from southern Mexico and Guatemala.)
Iturbide lived with the Sonoran Seris and the Tehuantepec Zapotecs for extended periods of time, integrating herself as woman and artist before making any photographs. She has written: "I never use a telephoto lens. I need to be close to people. I need their complicity; I need them to be aware that I am there taking their picture. I hate paparazzi."
Over her career, most of Iturbide's images have been produced in Mexico City, where she continues to live. It was there that she was introduced to photography by Mexican master Manuel Álvarez Bravo and adopted his dreamlike focus. Like Álvarez Bravo, she often isolates individuals against walls or windows and poses them in stances of poetic stillness. Two 1986 photographs depict a transvestite male named Magnolia. In one, he stands in a long, flowered dress and holds a small square mirror up to his handsome face. In the second, Magnolia wears a big round sombrero and a beaded necklace, pulling out the decorative hem of his short sleeveless dress. The Zapotec Indians call individuals who are born male but adopt female clothing and behavior muxe. To have a muxe child is considered a blessing rather than a curse; muxes are believed to constitute a third sex.
In 1991, in the Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacán, Iturbide created a self-portrait she calls Ojos para volar? (Eyes to Fly?). The artist holds two birds up to her eyes. One is dead, the other alive. It is a disturbing image. Is she about to poke out her own eyes with the birds' beaks? Or are the birds simply metaphors for the expansion of vision? Iturbide made several photographs of birds: some of skies speckled by hundreds of birds swirling together in murmurations, others of a small cluster of birds settling into nests at the top of leafless trees, and still others caught in the shadows of stick puppets.
Iturbide rejects the terms surrealism or magical realism as "fast labels for Latin American art," insisting that she captures "what was naturally there in the moment." She uses black and white photography almost exclusively to "stay true to the dignity of her subjects," rather than creating oneiric fantasies. Her portraits are consistently compelling. As she has said: "What the eye sees is a synthesis of who you are and all you have learned. This is what I call the language of photography." She speaks that language in haunting and poetic images.
Graciela Iturbide: Between Two Worlds, a major retrospective spanning more than five decades of work, was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from July 11 through November 29, 2026. Featuring more than 150 photographs, the exhibition was organized by Fundación Mapfre in collaboration with SFMOMA.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 sfmoma.org
Betty Ann Brown is an art historian, critic, and curator based in Los Angeles. Photos for article taken by Betty Ann Brown
