Graciela Iturbide, one of Mexico's few women photographers, documents the life of Indian women and, more recently, Chicana gang members in East Los Angeles in her first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Her photographs are also autobiographical.
Born in Mexico City in 1942, Iturbide is the eldest of 13 children of a conservative upper-middle-class Catholic family. Her father was a businessman and her mother a traditional housewife. Iturbide was educated at Sagrado Corazon School, San Luis Potosi, and, although she had thought of becoming a writer, at twenty she married an architect and assumed the traditional role of wife and mother. Her longing to be an artist persisted, however, and in 1969 she began to study film at the Centro de Estudios Cinematograficos (CUEC) in Mexico City. While studying film, she also began independent studies in still photography with Mexico's foremost photographer, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who became her mentor. Bravo's own interest in Mexico's cultural and national heritage supported and encouraged Iturbide's dormant interests.
Crisis Period
About this time, she underwent a number of intense emotional crises in her life - a divorce and the sudden death of her daughter at age six in 1970. At this point she evaluated her life and decided to actively pursue her desire to become an artist. In the past five years, Iturbide has become one of a number of Mexican photographers who are earning international recognition for their sensitive interpretations of Mexico's indigenous cultures.
In documenting the feminine aspect of Mexican life, Iturbide is simultaneously exploring her own psyche and identity as a Mexicana. She has said, "Photography is a way of life. I write, I draw with light my daily experiences; I retain in images casual external encounters and internal finalities. I seek to trap life in the reality that surrounds me, without forgetting that therein lie my dreams, my symbols, my imagination. In human beings, I search to discover my own nostalgia." And her nostalgia is for both a personal and a cultural heritage.
Masks are prevalent in Mexican society, both disguising and concealing the identity of the masquerader. Sometimes the mask is grotesque and sometimes comic, but it always creates distance. In one of Iturbide's early photographs, Carnaval, Tlaxcala, Mexico (1974), a lone figure in costume and mask stands in a barren field on the periphery of Mexico City. There are no clues to her identity or place and her presence is puzzling. The frequent festivals in Mexico are an opportunity to assume a new persona, as in Janus, Ocumichu, Michoacan, Mexico (1981), where a man dressed in trousers and huaraches dons the penitentes' hood, but also wears a dress, and a modern and an antique mask. The starkness of the background in combination with the beauty of the natural light make this one of the most mysterious and memorable photographs in the exhibition. Also, in Procession, Chalma, State of Mexico (1983), a figure dressed as death is followed by a number of other masked figures as if in a dance of death. In Veronica, Patron Saint of Photography (1982), we see three women who appear to be nuns; a veiled nun in the center holds a cloth imprinted with the suffering face of Christ. There are also two other veiled figures where reality is quite laterally screened out: Serafin1986), who holds up a screen between herself and the camera, and a recent photograph, Black Veil for the
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