Cecilia Brunson Projects Santiago presents Graciela Iturbide
Cecilia Brunson Projects Santiago announces a solo exhibition by acclaimed Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. With works spanning four decades (from 1969 – 2007), the exhibition presents key moments from the artist’s career, including some of her most iconic images.
Iturbide is most famous for her photographs that capture images of Latin America. Two projects in particular focused her lens on some of the indigenous people of the continent. In 1978 she captured the Seri Indians, a group of fisherman living a nomadic lifestyle in the Sonora desert in the north west of Mexico, along the border with Arizona. A later series, from 1979 – 1989, captured the Juchitán people who form part of the Zapotec culture native to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Important photographs from both these series will be on display.
Yet Iturbide’s work is more than just mere photojournalism. As Iturbide herself says “The camera is an excuse to share the life of the people, the rhythm and simplicity of festivities, to discover my country. While using my camera I am, above all, an actress participating in the scene taking place at the moment, and the other actors know what role I play. I never think of my images as a project, I simply live the situations and photograph them; it is afterwards that I discover the images.” For her, the camera is a pretext for knowing the world.
Iturbide also turns the focus of the lens onto herself. A selection of self- portraits, taken over these four decades, demonstrate the artist’s gaze and quest for knowledge turning inward. Images such as Autorretrato con serpents, Oaxaca (Self-portrait with Serpents), Oaxaca and the haunting Ojos Para Volar (Eyes to Fly With), Coyoacán, México present intimate portraits of the artist.
Born in 1942 in Mexico City, Graciela Iturbide has had solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou (1982), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1990), Philadelphia Museum of Art (1997), Paul Getty Museum (2007), MAPFRE Foundation, Madrid (2009), Photography Museum Winterthur (2009), Barbican Art Gallery (2012), the Amparo Museum in Puebla, Mexico (2013) and the Tate Modern (2014) amongst others.
Iturbide’s work is in numerous public collections including Casa de las Américas, Havana, Cuba; Casa de la Cultura de Juchitán, Juchitán, Oaxaca, Mexico; Musée National D ́Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California, USA; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA; The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection, Los Angeles, California, USA; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom; MAPFRE Foundation, Madrid, Spain and ESCALA Essex Collection of Art from Latin America, Colchester, United Kingdom.
