Graciela Iturbide
| Graciela Iturbide | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Graciela Iturbide 1942 Mexico City, Mexico |
| Nationality | Mexican |
| Education | Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México |
| Known for | Photography |
Graciela Iturbide (born 1942 in Mexico City) is a Mexican photographer. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is included in many major museum collections.
Graciela Iturbide was born in Mexico in 1942, the eldest of thirteen children. She was exposed to photography early on in life. Her father took pictures of her and her siblings and she got her first camera when she was 11 years old. When she was a child, her father put all the photographs in a box and she said "it was a great treat to go to the box and look at these photos, these memories." She then married the architect Manuel Rocha Díaz in 1962 and had three children over the next eight years.
Iturbide turned to photography after the death of her six-year-old daughter, Claudia, in 1970. She studied at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she met her mentor, the teacher, cinematographer and photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. She traveled with Bravo between 1970 and 1971 and learned that "there is always time for the pictures you want." In 1971, she got the Eugene Smith grand and a scholarship at the Guggenheim College. Iturbide photographs everyday life, almost entirely in black-and-white. She was inspired by the photography of Josef Koudelka, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastiao Salgado and Álvarez Bravo. Her self-portraits especially reflect and showcase Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s influence and play with innovation and attention to detail. She became interested in the daily life of Mexico's indigenous cultures and people (the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Seri) and has photographed life in Mexico City, Juchitán, Oaxaca and on the Mexican/American border (La Frontera). With focus on identity, sexuality, festivals, rituals, daily life, death and roles of women; Iturbide’s photographs share visual stories of cultures in constant transitional periods. There’s also juxtaposition within her images between urban vs rural life and indigenous vs modern life. Overall, her main concern within her photography has always been the exploration and investigation of her own cultural environment. Graciela Iturbide uses photography as a way of understanding Mexico in it totality; combining indigenous practices, assimilated Catholic practices and foreign economic trade under one scope.
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