Graciela Iturbide’s Private Universe September 24th, 2010 by Cassandra McGrath

An ostrich stares indignantly at me, hip jutting out as though I had ditched its Thanksgiving dinner. “What are you doing in this gallery staring at me?” it seems to say. “Why didn’t you bring the cranberry sauce?” Like an exaggerated cartoon version of an image in National Geographic, the ostrich is one of the more vivid subjects in ’s most recent exhibition, Graciela Iturbide: asor, ending this week in the Rose Gallery at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Iturbide once said, “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.” In “asor,” taken straight from her personal archive, Iturbide creates a fantasy world that explores the terror and joy of childhood solitude. Inspired by her grandchildren and Alice in Wonderland, Iturbide photographed the Southern , Italy, and , using snippets from each location but nothing identifiable from any of them. Instead, she crafted a new narrative that makes the fantastic pedestrian and the pedestrian fantastic. Clocks and abandoned buildings take on the significance of mythical creatures. In one pair of photographs, two blank eyeholes carved out of rocks peer out at the viewer, observing and saying nothing. Birds gather ominously in the sky like locusts, and in one arresting image, sunflowers are backlit and shot from below, drooping and spiky as Venus Fly Traps. Iturbide plays with perspective: A giant plaster head sits next to a parked car, disorienting any sense of scale. A bell-shaped flower is photographed from the side, grossly distorted, its surface as smooth and shiny as porcelain.

In one remarkable shot, a leopard lunges towards the camera, eyes shut, front legs crumpled in an awkward gait. The leopard looks as clumsy as a cartoon, with a viciously contorted face, like a living stuffed animal about to be killed. Iturbide photographs things with a childlike wonder and innocence, only distorted through a morbid prism. Her minutely crafted universe reveals her fascination with the coexistence of life and death, and the exquisite beauty of violence.

Iturbide came late to photography, influenced by the surrealism and mysticism of Luis Buñuel and the indigenous people photographed by Manuel Alvarez Bravo. The last time I saw Iturbide’s photography was three years ago in a retrospective at the J. Paul Getty Muesum, and the images were grisly: dead pigs, strung-up birds, a woman clutching a knife in her mouth preparing a goat for slaughter. Iturbide is best known for her ethnographic images of the Zapotec people in Oaxaca, including her famed “Mujer Ángel,” in which an indigenous woman faces a fertile valley, casually holding a boombox.

Despite the intrigue of Iturbide’s newest exhibition, I was drawn to much of her other work on display in the gallery. In 2006, Iturbide was allowed to photograph inside the estate of Frida Kahlo, and in one image, a pair of tiny, deformed-looking feet rest on the siding of a porcelain bathtub. The bathtub is Kahlo’s and the feet are Iturbide’s, appearing corpse-like. Several other images are more immediately arresting than her newer work, which is more quiet and restrained. But Iturbide’s willingness to explore new artistic territory demonstrates her continued relevance. Perhaps Iturbide deserves more recognition, which is difficult when her newer images are so private. Upon discovering her for the first time, the viewer is free to create a new reality, in which ostriches talk, flowers are monstruous, death is imminent, and life is more vivid than ever.

Graciela Iturbide as Anthropological Photographer

STANLEY BRANDES

This article is a reflection on the images of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide. Focusing on her portraits of indigenous peoples of Mexico (particularly the Seri, Isthmus Zapotec, and Mixtec), the author addresses the anthropological value of a body of visual material that is artistic, rather than documentary, in conception and execution. The article inquires into whether and to what extent the images of a professional photographer such as Iturbide can be considered ethnographic. In essence, the author argues, Iturbide may be thought of as an anthropological photographer, given that her work is of educational and inspirational value to ethnographers of Mexico. [Key words: gender, indigenous identity, Mexico]

raciela Iturbide is indisputably one of Latin photographyFon photographic expeditions. With support America’s most celebrated photographers, from A´ lvarez Bravo, she gradually became a professional G admired and respected not only for her artistry, photographer. but also for her ability to get close to her subjects and Iturbide’s first major project, initiated in 1974, was reveal aspects of their lives that would be inaccessible or the documentation of General Omar Torrijos’ attempt entirely invisible to the casual observer. Iturbide cannot to establish a left-wing regime in Panama. In 1978, be called an ethnographic, or even documentary, pho- together with Nacho Lo´pez, Mariana Yaompolsky, tographer. Because most of her photographic subjects and other well-known documentary photographers are posed, she can hardly be called a street photographer of Mexico, Iturbide received a commission from the either. And yet her photographsFparticularly those National Indigenous Institute of Mexico (INI) to name dealing with her native MexicoFcan prove extremely an Indian group of her own choosing and, working in interesting and informative to any scholar with a collaboration with a writer of her own choosing, produce concern for indigenous life. An exploration of Graciela a book about that group. Iturbide selected the Seri, a Iturbide’s Mexican photography calls into question group of some 500 seminomadic people in the Sonora the way photographers and visual anthropologists alike desert who were in the process of becoming entirely tend to classify imagery. Her work straddles genres of sedentary. The result of that project was a book entitled still photography as they are normally defined, thereby Los que viven en la arena (1981) (Those Who Live in the raising questions as to the kinds of imagery that anthro- Sand), which she produced in collaboration with an- pologists should consider relevant to their own research thropologist Luis Barjau. endeavors. The work also illuminates similarities and Following the Seri project, Iturbide began to devote differences between anthropological photographers and her photography to the remote, rural, mainly indigenous other image-makers who focus on powerless, marginal peoples of her own country. In carrying out this work, members of society, thereby validating their lives as she, as an elite urban Mexican, became virtually a tour- artistic or intellectually vibrant subjects. ist, or, more accurately, a quasi-anthropologist. Born in 1942 in , Graciela Iturbide Cuaucte´moc Medina remarks that ‘‘Iturbide belongs to a began her career in film making. She even briefly acted generation of Mexican and Latin American photogra- in movies. In 1970, after Iturbide’s daughter died at the phers who reactivated a passion for the discipline in the age of six in an accident, she underwent a personal crisis, 1970s and 1980s, mostly from within so called ‘ethno- abandoned the world of film, and began accompanying graphic photography’ ’’ (Medina 2001:11). It is through Manuel A´ lvarez Bravo (1902–2002)Fdean of Mexican her work that the indigenous peoples who form the

Visual Anthropology Review, Vol. 24, Issue 2, pp. 95–102, ISSN 1058-7187, online ISSN 1548-7458. & 2008 by the American Anthropological Association. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2008.00007.x. 96 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 24 Number 2 Fall 2008

subjects of her main projectsFprincipally the Seri, the culture of the people portrayed in her images, it is virtu- Isthmus Zapotec, and the MixtecFreveal themselves to us. ally impossible to understand them from an ethnographic What seems curious about Iturbide’s Mexican pho- or anthropological point of view. tographic corpus is that it does not fit into the mold The way we understand and interpret documentary of documentary imagery. She has never attempted to photographs is through captions. Graciela Iturbide’s explore the entire way of life of a people or to reveal captions are short and often cryptic. They locate some hidden truth about them. Is it possible, then, to photographic subjects geographically and denote in learn something substantial about Mexican society from the simplest of fashions an object or a person figured in Graciela Iturbide’s photographs? Is she an ‘‘innate an- the image. But the captions offer no information that thropologist,’’ as some observers state (Medina 2001:3)? the viewer can rely upon to contextualize the unusual, Or is there something about her artistry that convinces frequently exotic portraits in any meaningful cultural viewers that her work is designed to instruct them about way. On the other hand, the artistic power of the images indigenous Mexico? stimulates the anthropological imagination. Iturbide’s Consider first the obvious conclusion: in terms of the pictures operate on an emotional, rather than intellectual, professional definition, Graciela Iturbide clearly is not an level. It is above all their affective impact that points to anthropologist. She possesses neither formal anthropo- something worth exploring from an ethnographic stand- logical training nor academic degrees in anthropology. point. Graciela’s photographs raise questions about the Nor is her approach to her subject anthropological. society and culture of her subjectsFquestions which Anthropologists pose questions of the world around them any serious ethnographer of Mexico, in particular, would and carry out systematic research in an attempt to answer want to explore. these questions. Anthropologists also build their argu- It is for this reason, and others, that I would say that ments through reference to published work that precedes Graciela Iturbide is, in fact, an ‘‘innate anthropologist.’’ their own. Graciela Iturbide, whose photographic corpus Consider, first, that her photographic subjects are essen- is intimately personal and whose goals are primarily tially the kind of people to whom anthropologists have aesthetic, fails to conform to this scientific paradigm. traditionally given most attention: indigenous peoples, Questions of cause and effect do not interest her. Nor does marginal peoples, forgotten peoplesFand, most often she seek to document reality. among these groups, women. Regarding the Seri, who And there is more that separates her from anthro- initially stimulated her interest in native peoples, Grac- pologists. The professional ethnographer attempts to iela states, ‘‘With the Seris . . . most of my work was learn about and convey with as much fidelity as possible portraits, because their daily life is extremely simple, the economy, society, religion, and polity of the study nothing happens. Men go fishing, live in the desert, population. Graciela Iturbide, by contrast, makes no pre- make sculptures; the women collect snails from the tense to providing her viewing public with a literal sea and create necklaces, but their life is very austere’’ description of her photographic subjects. She renounces (Bradu and Iturbide 2003:54). scientific goals outright. She reveals her lack of objec- Perhaps her most famous photograph from this tivity in a series of brilliant interviews conducted by project is the one she calls Mujer angel (Angel Woman), a writer and literary critic Fabienne Bradu (2003). ‘‘I do not ghostly female figure, viewed from behind as she rushes produce photographs to provide instruction about the into the wilderness, clutching a radio/tape recorder indigenous world or my country, nor to hear from others in her right hand. Despite its beautiful and deeply that they are good or bad,’’ she says. ‘‘If [critics] like my mysterious composition, the story behind this picture is results, that is fine. [Photography for me] is a passion, eminently anthropological, that is, anthropological once that is, an internal drive to take along the camera when I we learn of the context in which it was taken. Graciela go out; it is like therapy’’ (Bradu and Iturbide 2003:35). In informs us, via one of the Bradu interviews, that the other words, Graciela Iturbide uses the camera as an in- image was shot from behind as this woman led her and strument to satisfy her own inner needs. It is no surprise, a male friend into the desert to see ancient petroglyphs. then, that her work is above all personal, metaphoric, and Graciela confesses that she does not remember taking the intuitive. It communicates on an emotional rather than picture. She even suspects that it was the friend who took intellectual level. Without knowing something about the it (Bradu and Iturbide 2003:54) (Figure 1).

Stanley Brandes received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a member of the Department of Anthropology since 1974. His research focuses on , Mexico, and the United States. His most recent books are Staying Sober in Mexico City (2002) and Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond (2006). Graciela Iturbide BRANDES 97

FIGURE 1. Mujer Angel. Mu´jer a´ngel, desierto de Sonora, Me´xico, by Graciela Iturbide. Gift of Susan Steinhauser and Daniel Greenberg. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. We know from the Bradu interviews that the Seri This pattern is particularly evident in Iturbide’s most were familiar with tourists, who would take color Polar- famous photographic study of an indigenous Mexican oid pictures of them. These indigenous people, far from people: the Zapotecs of Juchita´n, located in the extreme constituting a remote, isolated tribe, evidently lived south of the Republic along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. in part from tourism. We can thus infer that Graciela’s Here, as with the Seri, Iturbide does not strive to docu- expedition into the desert was something familiar to ment these people as an anthropologist wouldFor, that the Seri, a tourist route they repeated many times with is to say, as anthropologists already have done, for much outsiders, who pursued them as photographic subjects. has already been written about them. And yet her images, From just a few sentences in the Bradu interview we can mainly posed portraits, not only engage the anthropo- begin to construct a context in which to understand the logical imagination. They also, if properly contextualized, photograph ethnographically. The Seri are a desert people, provide ethnographic information, even though they dressed in indigenous garb (in reality, 19th-century Mex- almost always appear either without captions or with the ican women’s costume), in the midst of transformation briefest of labels. through tourism. The radio/recorder provides information Consider the image that Iturbide titles El rapto aboutSericommercialtiestotheoutsideworldand (The Abduction). A young girl lies in bed, her coverings evidence of a nomadic group in the midst of change. adorned with flowers. To an untutored observer, the Angel Woman is an unusual photograph for Iturbide picture would seem to portray the victim of violent attack. in that it portrays a subject in motion. Although, as stated Iturbide explains the actual meaning of the image thus: earlier, she came to photography through filmFand, in fact, was an award-winning actressFshe states openly The Abduction makes reference to a time when two that ‘‘what I am most obsessed with is composition, the youngsters from the countryside want to live to- image, rather than time. For many others, to capture a gether. The boy decides to abduct the girl, but the act moment is the most important [goal]; time is indispens- is planned by both parties in concert. They go to the able because it is movement. But, since I do not have boy’s house, where he deflowers her with his finger. many images in motion, time is of secondary importance The boy’s family is aware that their son has the girl, to me’’ (Bradu and Iturbide 2003:55–56). With a few im- but the girl’s family is not, and the following morn- portant exceptions, Graciela’s photographs are individual ing, the boy’s family looks to see if there is blood, if portraits and, less frequently, group portraits. In this the girl really was a virgin. Then, there is a fiesta and aspect, she varies dramatically from her Spanish friend they sing erotic songs, and seek out the girl’s family. and colleague, Cristina Garcı´a Rodero, who classifies her They show them the bloody handkerchief to prove own work as retratos en accio´n (portraits in action) that she was a virgin and that she was in fact de- (Brandes 2005). flowered . . . . Afterwards, the girl remains in bed for 98 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 24 Number 2 Fall 2008

separate from the photograph itself, provide ethno- graphic information. Other images from Juchita´n illustrate already well-known ethnographic facts. Consider for a moment the portraits of Magnolia, a transvestite whom Iturbide befriended throughout her years among the Zapotec. Magnolia incontrovertibly belongs to a group of cross- dressers known throughout the Isthmus of Tehuantepec as muxhes (subject of a film by Alejandra Caro entitled Muxes: Authentic, Intrepid Seekers of Danger). The origin of the word muxhe is uncertain, but some scholars explain it as a local derivative of mujer, the Spanish word for woman. Muxhes constitute a prime ethnographic example of a third gender. (For others, see, e.g., Nanda 1999; Shore 1981.) Anthropologists generally consider the two sexesFmale and femaleFto be defined by physiologi- cal attributes. But among many peoples, the Zapotec included, we find multiple genders, which are groups classified primarily according to behavioral and cultural characteristics, rather than anatomy alone (Figure 2). Zapotecs consider muxhes to be neither men nor women, but rather a third gender, defined, as Analisa Taylor (2006:822) points out for the specific case of Oaxaca, primarily by their occupational roles. Among the people of Juchita´n, muxhes are classified as such primarily for their domesticity, rather than their mode of dress or sexual orientation. (Various Native American groups in the United States possessed equivalent third- FIGURE 2. Magnolia, Juchita´n Oaxaca, by Graciela Iturbide. Gift of gender groups, known by the generic French term Susan Steinhauser and Daniel Greenberg. Courtesy of the J. Paul berdaches [Whitehead 1981].) The portraits of Magnolia Getty Museum, Los Angeles. provide anthropologists with a perfect illustration of how a muxhe actually looks. Because these portraits are posed, they also reveal muxhe self-image, or how that a week and then the wedding ceremony is performed individual wants to be seen. in church. [Bradu and Iturbide 2003:26–27] But Iturbide’s photographic corpus from Juchita´n not only reflects ethnographic reality. It has worked as well to shape perceptions of Zapotec society, especially Iturbide’s portrait shows the girl during her week- with regard to gender. Take, for example, the photo long bed rest. entitled La sen˜ora de las iguanas (Lady of the Igua- Any social anthropologist of Mexico knows about nas),which enjoys international fame not only for its this sort of abduction as prelude to formal marriage stunning visual impact but also because it reinforces the vows (see, e.g., Brandes 1968; Stross 1974). Variations popular view that Isthmus women constitute a kind of of the custom exist throughout the Mexican Republic, powerful Amazonian elite. Lady of the Iguanas, you will mainly under the name of ‘‘the robo’’ (theft). The practice recall, is a head shot of a heavyset, middle-aged woman existed until recently throughout southern as of proud countenance, gazing off in the distance. She well (e.g., Frigole´ and Reixach 1982; Lockwood 1974). seems entirely unfazed by the six or seven iguanas that (In Spain it was called llevarse la novia [carry away the writhe directly on top of her head (Figure 3). bride].) However, the specific form that the abduction In an interview with Fabienne Bradu, Iturbide takes among the Zapotec of Juchita´nFthe digital explains that before she ever visited Juchita´n, she heard deflowering, the bed rest, and other detailsFis rare and that market women carry iguanas on their head. Once perhaps even unique to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. she got to the Isthmus, she caught sight of one such Iturbide’s image arouses ethnographic curiosity, and her woman, got permission to take her picture, and in a explanatory words, presented in an interview entirely series of spontaneous moments, managed to get in a few Graciela Iturbide BRANDES 99

her work as aiming to challenge stereotypes of the submissive, self-deprecating, abject Mexican woman. Certainly, Juchita´n seems in part designed toward this end. Aside from the iconic Woman of the Iguanas, there are pictures of nude and seminude womenFone is seated on a toilet bathing, another stands on the beach in her underwear, a third peers directly into the camera as she stands in a doorway entirely undressed. Another series of shots shows women openly imbibing alcohol. A seated woman of substantial size chuckles as she brings a beer bottle close to her mouth. Yet another scene shows a scantily clad young woman looking into the camera as she lies in a seductive posture on top of a bed. Iturbide’s images of the Isthmus Zapotec, according to Analisa Taylor, ‘‘invariably center upon the piercing gaze of self- assured Indian women’’ (2006:830). All of these images defy the usual stereotypes of feminine ideals in Mexico, symbolized most dramatically by the purity and sheer selflessness of the Virgin of Guadalupe as well as by the abject subjugation of Herna´n Corte´s’s consort, la Mal- inche. In fact, as Analisa Taylor (2006:833–836) states, photographic images such as these, in which women of a single Indian group are portrayed as forward and aggressive, function to reinforce the stereotypic repre- FIGURE 3. Nuestra Sen˜ora de las iguanas, Juchita´n, Oaxaca,by sentation of the submissive woman who prevails Graciela Iturbide. Gift of Susan Steinhauser and Daniel Greenberg. throughout Mexico generally. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. This is not to say that Iturbide’s images fail to capture Mexican women as we conceive of them stereotypically. shots. Iturbide admits that the single picture she chose In the photographic corpus of Graciela Iturbide, women for exhibition and publication represents her own biases of all ages are depicted in association with supernatural and interpretation. ‘‘If anyone saw the contact sheet of imagery. We see young girls dressed as angels, as well the Lady of the Iguanas,’’ she says, ‘‘they would see that as the Mujer angel herselfFthe Seri Angel Woman from the woman is dying of laughter’’ (Bradu and Iturbide the Sonoran desertFinterpreted for the viewer as an an- 2003:29, 30). Only in this one photo do the iguanas keep gel, albeit lacking artificial wings. A woman from Chiapas still and does the woman appear serious and contem- draped in a black rebozo, her head tilted to one side plative. And yet this is the image that has become and bearing an anguished countenance, seems to imitate transformed into an international feminist icon. Iturbide the Virgin as she appears in thousands of paintings of the further explains: ‘‘For the book on Juchita´n, Elena crucifixion. Several photographs of women from Juchita´n Poniatowska wrote a text that, in its own right, is an show them highlighted against a background that mimics interpretation. Many feminists in Japan or , the rays of the sunFrays not unlike those that surround following the text of Elena Poniatowska, believed in the the Virgin of Guadalupe. In one image, the rays are actu- existence of a matriarchy in Juchita´n and went there ally the marks of a badly defaced wall. In another, they to interview the [actual] lady of the iguanas; and they are a bundle of straw, which the woman carries on her asked her, ‘Are you a feminist?’ and Zoraida answered, back. Not all of the sacred imagery derives from Catholic ‘Of course I’m a feminist. Ever since my husband died, tradition. A well-known portrait shows an old Zapotec I support myself.’ In this fashion,’’ concludes Iturbide, curandera (healer), applying her supernatural gifts by ‘‘many myths are created’’ (Bradu and Iturbide 2003: grasping the head of a young girl (Figure 4). 28–29). Graciela’s images almost always permit multiple In the imagery of Graciela Iturbide, just as in the interpretations, thereby satisfying, as she puts it, ‘‘the popular imagination, women are more closely allied fantasy of each viewer’’ (Bradu and Iturbide 2003:29). with the supernatural world than are men. At the same And fantasies are likely to be most vivid in the domain time, they are intimately tied to the natural world. Sherry that seems most central to Graciela’s work: the anthropo- Ortner long ago posited that societies all over the world logically popular theme of gender. It is easy to interpret associate women with nature and men with culture 100 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 24 Number 2 Fall 2008

FIGURE 5. Los pollos, Juchita´n, Oaxaca, by Graciela Iturbide. Gift of Susan Steinhauser and Daniel Greenberg. Courtesy of the J. Paul FIGURE 4. Curacio´n, Juchita´n, Oaxaca, by Graciela Iturbide. Gift of Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Susan Steinhauser and Daniel Greenberg. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The goat slaughter is just the most dramatic example of an important theme that pervades Graciela Iturbide’s (Ortner 1972). It is not, as Ortner says, that women are in entire corpus: the connection between women and ani- fact closer to nature. Rather, they are thought to be more mals. Seri women are shown from behind, standing on natural than are men, governed more by biological the beach holding fish. An Isthmus Zapotec woman processes like reproduction and devoted to satisfying the peers from her window, four fish dangling delicately family’s physical needs. In Juchita´n, as in other photo- from her fingers. A young woman from central Mexico, graphic projects, Graciela illustrates natural woman: dressed as a mermaid, is surrounded by artificial fish woman as nursing mother, woman as caregiver to that float around her in a terrestrial recreation of the children, woman as bride, woman as preparer of food. sea. Then, too, we see Zapotec women holding iguanas Iturbide’s photographs of the goat slaughter among the on their lap and standing alongside a giant wooden rep- Mixtec Indians, entitled ‘‘In the Name of the Father,’’ lica of an iguana. Women are portrayed carrying focus on the woman’s role in what the artist considers a chickens, dismembering rabbits, and disguising them- sacrificial rite. Women prepare the goats for slaughter, but selves with, in one instance, a bull’s head, in another a men do the actual killing. After the goat’s throat is slit, it is giant crab, each held up to the face as if it were a mask. the woman who bends down with a pail to collect the Through this imagery the women are transformed into spurting bloodFa role in animal slaughters that women half-human/half-animal creatures, which is to say, into have performed at least since the time Peter Breughel the humans who are integral parts of nature (Figure 5). Elder painted similar scenes from the 16th-century It would be unfair to say that Graciela Iturbide’s Flemish peasant life. On numerous occasions, during the photography is guided by a notion of the strict division 1960s and 1970s, I myself observed women collecting between men and women. Her imagery is too varied and blood during the annual pig slaughter in rural Spain. complex to allow for simple binary oppositions. For that Graciela Iturbide BRANDES 101

matter, her mission is not simply to portray women who I say consciously or unconsciously because, as stated defy the usual image of la mujer abnegada (self-sacrificing earlier, she undertook her first major photographic study woman), as many of Iturbide’s portraits of Zapotec and in Mexico among the Seri in collaboration with an Mixtec Indians actually do. Men and women alike appear anthropologist, Luis Barjau. The result of this projectF in photographs replete with religious symbolism. Both Los que viven en la arena (Those Who Live in the Sand gender groups appear alongside animals as well. Probably [Iturbide and Barjau 1981])Fis a truly joint anthropo- the most famous example of a man associated with ani- logical and photographic venture. It is uncertain whether mals is the photograph entitled ‘‘Lord of the Birds,’’ which working together with an anthropologist actually influ- shows an elderly caretaker and sole human occupant of an enced Iturbide’s photographic style and methods. But island in the state of Nayarit. He peers up at a sky filled there is no doubt that she holds in common with an- with dozens of gulls in flight. The pointed collars of the thropologists the desire to share the life of the people she caretaker’s jacket extend outward into the wind. They studies. She furthermore understands that this method- mimic wings and give him a birdlike aspect that makes ology, however deliberate and slow, is the surest avenue him one with the creatures flying above. to achieving her photographic goals. In Iturbide’s photographic corpus, men and women Now let us listen to Iturbide’s own description of rarely appear in the same photograph. In fact, she focuses how she came to work among the women of Juchita´n: altogether more on women than on men. Her women are often interpreted as strong, proud, and stately, although I I was lucky that in 1979 called me find numerous images where they display weakness, and offered me the opportunity to go to Juchita´n.... humility, or a downright playful approach to life. One What he wanted was for me to take photos so that example is the photograph from Juchita´n entitled Quince my work would return later to the Juchita´n Cultural an˜os, in which a young girl with a very serious face stands Center. I went there to live for prolonged periods of looking straight into the camera, while an old woman time . . . . In Juchita´n, I went to the market, I stayed with long white hair sits stoop-backed at her side, with no with the women, those strong, fat, politicized, visual communication between the two. Another famous emancipated, marvelous women. I discovered the image shows an old woman, looking very small as she world of women. I tried to spend all my time with stands in one lonely corner of a large, empty room. them and they volunteered to me a certain amount Iturbide’s female world admits of no generalities. Each of protection. Of course, the fact of being a woman portrait conveys an individual spirit and life rather than a gave me access to their daily life and traditions. faceless gender role. Like an anthropologist, she explores [Bradu and Iturbide 2003:25–26] aspects of indigenous life in all its rich religious and cultural symbolism. But she above all seeks to reveal, not Iturbide’s account of her life in Juchita´n shows that the beliefs and behavior of any particular tribe, but rather the Zapotec women she came to know were more than the emotional texture of each unique person, regardless of photographic subjects. They were collaborators in her ethnic identity. In so doing, she transcends descriptions of work and, perhaps more importantly, friends. She states: a given people and communicates the range of emotion and activity common to all humanity. They’re strong women, physically large, and the Iturbide’s photographs in fact reflect her own ability whole time they were telling jokes and erotic tales to cross cultural and linguistic boundaries. In this re- in ZapotecFat times they translated for me, at times spect, she fulfills a goal that most social anthropologists not . . . . I lived in their houses. They cared for me, strive to attain. Nearly a century ago, one of the great they took me to the market, they in a way adopted founders of our discipline, Bronislaw Malinowski, estab- me. They allowed me to take photos and notified me lished the basic principles of anthropological fieldwork of fiestas. I went with them on eight hour-long (Malinowski 1961:1–25). These include sharing the life of pilgrimages. They taught me, for example, about the the people under investigation, taking up long residence properties of the alligator, which is another Juchita´n among them, and communicating in the native language. tradition, which few people know and which survives The single overriding end of the anthropologist, accord- in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. It wasn’t only that ing to Malinowski, is to see and convey the world through they gave me permission to take pictures, but also the eyes of the people themselves. Through the process that they took initiative and showed me things. of anthropological investigation, the strange becomes I came to describe Juchita´n through their eyes, but familiar and the familiar becomes strange. at the same time through mine . . . . It was thus that Iturbide’s procedures in the field consciously or I entered into the Zapotec world. [Bradu and Iturbide unconsciously replicate those of the anthropologist. 2003:30–31] 102 VISUAL ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW Volume 24 Number 2 Fall 2008

In the interview from which these words are extracted, References Fabienne Bradu asks Iturbide, ‘‘What did the indigenous world give you as a person, rather than as an artist?’’ Bradu, Fabienne, and Graciela Iturbide Iturbide’s response: ‘‘Knowledge of the culture of my 2003 Graciela Iturbide habla con Fabienne Bradu. Madrid: country and consciousness of marginality. From [those La Fa´brica y Fundacio´n Telefo´nica. women] I learned that their culture is different from Brandes, Stanley mine. It changed me to learn that there exist other 1968 Tzintzuntzan Wedding: A Study in Cultural Complex- worlds, remote from and at the same time close to us . . . . ity. Papers of the Kroeber Anthropological Society 39:30–53. I probably learned to see a bit through their eyes’’ (Bradu 2005 Retratos en accio´n: La Espan˜a de Cristina Garcı´a and Iturbide 2003:38). Rodero. In Maneras de mirar: Lecturas antropolo´gi- A professional anthropologist’s response to Bradu’s cas de la fotografı´a. Carmen Ortı´z Garcı´a, Cristina question would probably be close to that of Iturbide’s. In Sa´nchez-Carretero, and Antonio Cea Gutie´rrez, eds. one project after anotherFamong the Seri, the Zapotec, Pp. 229–244. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Invest- and the Mixtec IndiansFIturbide managed to enter the igaciones Cientı´ficas. world of indigenous peoples in precisely the way that an Frigole´ Reixach, Juan anthropologist wouldFby sharing their life and acquir- 1982 Estrategias matrimoniales e identidad sociocultural ing their vision. And this approach yielded the kind of en la sociedad rural: ‘‘llevarse la novia’’ y ‘‘casarse’’ intimate knowledge and respect for people as individuals en un pueblo de la Vega Alta de Segura. Agricultura y that one expects of any responsible ethnographer. Sociedad 24(2):71–109. Iturbide, Graciela, and Luis Barjau What is more, Iturbide’s imagery reflects themes that 1981 Los que viven en la arena. Mexico, D.F.: INI-Fonapas. anthropologists of Mexico, in particular, have made a pri- Lockwood, William G. ority: gender, ritual and religion, and death. Among 1974 Bride Theft and Social Maneuverability in Western Iturbide’s corpus are important works concerning death, Bosnia. Anthropological Quarterly 47(3):253–269. particularly people dressed inskeletoncostumes,andthe Malinowski, Bronislaw famous pregnant bride wearing a death mask, who is in 1961 [1922] Argonauts of the Western Pacific. New York: reality a man. These photographs, states Iturbide, ‘‘concern E. P. Dutton. Mexican fantasies about death, and surely my own as well’’ Medina, Cuauhte´moc (Bradu and Iturbide 2003:36). Iturbide has never published 2001 Introduction. In Graciela Iturbide. Pp. 2–15. London: a long-planned photographic essay on death, because, as . Nanda, Serena she says, ‘‘I was afraid to confront death’’ (Bradu and Itur- 1999 Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. bide 2003:46). And yet it was the death of her young Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. daughter that seems to have diverted her from her original Ortner, Sherry B. cinematic projects and thrust her into the mentorship of 1972 Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture? Feminist Manuel A´ lvarez BravoFthe late dean of Mexican pho- Studies 1:5–31. tographyFand from there permanently into the world of Shore, Bradd photography. Photography, her own form of therapy, be- 1981 Sexuality and Gender in Samoa: Conceptions and came the means by which she could transcend her Missed Conceptions. In Sexual Meanings: The Cul- immediate life circumstances, and show her audience a tural Construction of Gender and Sexuality. Sherry Mexico that even we anthropologists could barely imagine. B. Ortner and Harriet Whitehead, eds. Pp. 192–215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stross, Brian Acknowledgments 1974 Tzeltal Marriage by Capture. Anthropological Quar- terly 47(3):328–346. An earlier version of this article was presented at a public seminar Taylor, Analisa dedicated to the Mexican photography of Graciela Iturbide, held at 2006 Malinche Matriarchal Utopia: Gendered Visions of the J. Paul Getty Center in Los Angeles on March 7, 2008, and Indigeneity in Mexico. Signs: Journal of Women in sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Trust. The seminar was conducted in Culture and Society 31(3):815–840. conjunction with an extensive exhibition of the artist’s work. Whitehead, Harriet I wish to thank Peter Tokofsky for suggesting useful bibliography 1981 The Bow and the Burden Strap: A New Look at Insti- and stimulating my interest in this topic, as well as Jane Brandes tutionalized Homosexuality in Native North America. for comments leading to stylistic improvements in the composition In Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of of this article. Peter Tokofsky at the Education Department of the Getty Center and Jennifer Robinson at the Communications Gender and Sexuality. Sherry B. Ortner and Harriet Department of the Getty Center deserve enormous thanks for Whitehead, eds. Pp. 80–115. Cambridge: Cambridge helping to bring this publication to light. University Press.

Graciela Iturbide and Chema Conesa Win Top Prizes at PhotoEspaña

Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide is seen during the presentation of her exhibition at Casal Solleric de Palma, in Palma, Ballearic Islands, Spain.

The exhibition features 180 pictures through 40 years of career. The exhibition runs from 18 June to 5 September 2010. EPA/MONTSERRAT T DIEZ.

MADRID.- PHotoEspaña has announced in a press conference the names of the winners of PHotoEspaña 2010. The director of PHotoEspaña, Claude Bussac, has announced the awards at Matadero Madrid with the presence of the top winners, Graciela Iturbide and Chema Conesa and the rest of the winning photographers and sponsors of the awards.

PHotoEspaña Baume & Mercier Award 2010 has gone to the photographer Graciela Iturbide (Mexico City, 1942). The photographer receives this award as recognition of her more than 40 years of professional career, in which she has become a fundamental figure of contemporary photography. Her images, full of beauty and power, have captured people and places of the whole world where she has acceded in a way close to the Anthropology and always from the respect. Iturbide, through tools like the patience and the invisibility reveals her amazing realities that spread beyond the borders of her natal country.

The prize endowed with 12.000 € for purchasing of work, a exclusive trophy designed by Eduardo Arroyo and a watch of the brand Baume & Mercier, has been awarded before to the photographers Malick Sidibé, , , , William Klein, , Helena Almeida, , Duane Michals, Chema Madoz, Luis Gonzalez Palma and in recognition of their important role in the international photographic panorama.

Bartolomé Ros Award to the best Spanish career in photography, endowed with 12.000 €, has gone to Chema Conesa. The jury made up Rosa Ros, person in charge of Bartolomé Ros's legacy; Isabel Muñoz, photographer andBartolomé Ros Award winner in 2009; Rafael Levenfeld, curator of exhibitions; Pilar Citoler, collector and member of the patronage of the National Museum Center of Art Reina Sofia; and Alberto Anaut, president of PHotoEspaña, have wanted to recognize with this prize his photographic work, with special incident in the portrait; for his direction of the library PHotoBolsillo and for his work as graphical editor, both in press and in the publishing area.

The award granted by Bartolomé Ros's legacy, is endowed with 12.000 € and recognizes the contribution of a Spanish personality to the development of the photography in any of its fields, being like commissioner, author, historian, critic or through any other direct link with the photography. The winners in previous editions have been Isabel Muñoz, Ricard Terré, Javier Vallhonrat, Marta Gili, Alejandro Castellote, la librería Kowasa, , Alberto García-Alix, Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Ramón Masats, Cristina García Rodero and Publio López Mondéjar.

The winner of Discoveries PHE Brugal Extra Viejo Award have been Vanessa Winship for the series Sweet Nothings. The Prize will allow her to expose her work individually in PHotoEspaña 2011. In this series of portraits Winship hoped the symbol of the uniform, the distance in repetition, and the austerity of the landscape would represent one thing. She also seeked the expressions of the girls faces to draw attention to the idea of these young girls poised at the moment “just before”. The moment where possibility lies, a time where the presentation of self, teeters into consciousness.

The jury of Discoveries (Descubrimientos) PHE Brugal Extra Viejo have been made up Francisco Carpio, critic and independent curator; Brett Rogers, the Photographer's Gallery director, from London; and Markus Hartmann, the director of international publications of Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern. In previous editions have received this prize Alejandra Laviada, Yann Gross, Harri Palviranta, Stanislas Guigui, Vesselina Nikolaeva, Comenius Röthlisberger, Pedro Álvarez, Tanit Plana, Sophie Dubosc, Juan de la Cruz Megías, Paula Luttringer and Matías Costa.

Casado Santapau Gallery wins Saab Off Festival Award with the exhibition Yesterday´s Sandwich 1969/70 by Boris Mikhailov. The prize endowed with 6.000 Euros for the adquisition of works, is granted by a jury of experts to one of the galleries of the Off Festival after valuing the approach and artistic value of the authors and the works , as well as the effort of the gallery for presenting a specific project for PHotoEspaña 2010. The jury have been made up Cristina Ros, Director of Es Baluard. Museu D'Art Moderno i Contemporani, from Palma De ; Michael Ángel García, critic and journalist; and Narcís Pujol, collector.

Yesterday's sandwich 1969/70 discovers an extraordinary world that joins the Soviet Union with the sex and the beauty. The images spring up from the artistic restrictions imposed during the communist period. The work shows Mikhailov's paper as artist, documentary photographer and social observer who shows his rich imagination and practical solutions for the survival in an unstable society.

Elmundo.es People´s Choise Award PHotoEspaña 2010, which the internauts grant of www.phe.es and www.elmundo.es to the best exhibition under the Official Section, has corresponded to the Between Times. Instants, intervals, durations, organized by Banco Santander Foundation and PHotoEspaña and co-produced by Banco Santander Foundation, Museum D'Arte Provincia di Nouro, Center of Art La Regenta / Government of Canary Islands, PHotoEspaña / La Fábrica with the collaboration of the Area of the Arts of the Town Hall of Madrid.

The exhibition, curated by Sérgio Mah will be open at Fernán Gómez Theatre. Center of Art / Banco Santander Foundation until 25th July. Between Times. Instants, intervals, durations is a collective exhibition consisting of over 200 works including photographs, video installations and films which, based on different viewpoints and methods, explore the experience of time. The 17 artists forming part of the exhibition are Ignasi Aballí, Daniel Blaufuks, Iñaki Bonillas, David Claerbout, Tacita Dean, Ceal Floyer, Joachim Koester, Jochen Lempert, Mabel Palacín, Paul Pfeiffer, Steven Pippin, Michael Snow, Clare Strand, Hiroshi Sugimoto, , Michael Wesely and Erwin Wurm. The whole exhibition creates a show window for visual practices representing time: the paradox between immobility and mobility, works based on sequences or images with a strong narrative thread, works focused on the experience of the memory which recreate events of the past or images which explore the duration and accumulation of time. The starting point for the exhibition is reflection on photography as a common element and tool for various visual art genres and practices, and the confirmation that one of the most distinctive themes of contemporary photography is its relationship with the concept of time.

PHotoEspaña awards eight prizes valued in €32,000 euros which recognise the Festival’s best exhibitions, the year’s most outstanding publications and the professional path of Spanish and international photographers, both well-known and emerging. With these awards the festival recognizes the important function that the publishing industry takes as a way for the diffusion of photography. All the winners books and the mentions of honor form a part of the exhibition The Best Photography Books of the Year placed at Matadero Madrid until July 25.

The jury formed by Juan Manuel Bonet, art critic; Pep Carrió, photographer; Wim van Sinderen, Photography Museum of The Hague; Miguel López, Antonio Saura Foundation. Casa Zavala director; and Alberto Corazón, designer; have recognized as the Best Photography Books of the Year in national category: Soviet Aviation by Alexánder Ródchenko and Varvara Stepánova, by the Publishing house Lampreave. Likewise, a mention of honor has been granted to Tempelhof, by Begoña Zubero, published by Exit Publicaciones.

The Best Photography Book of the Year in national Category has been awarded to Soviet Aviation, by Alexánder Ródchenko and Varvara Stepánova, published by Editorial Lampreave. This book was designed in 1939 for the pavilion of the CCCP in the World Fair of New York, while the second World War was beginning, and that has not returned to be edited till now. A poetical book of history, capable still of presenting the plane since nevermore could be had to done by it later, as a wonderful machine of progress and that reproduces the original edition and its technical particularities in size and ended. The volume contains illustrated texts of Alexander Lavrentiev, grandson of the authors, and by Ángel Gonzalez García. The book Tempelhof by Begoña Zubero and published by Exit Publicaciones have receive a special mention in this category.

The Best Photography Book of the Year in international Category has been awarded to Atlas Monographs, by Max Pam, published by T&G Publishing, from Australia. This book is a summary of eight diaries journey that starts with the most recent work of the Australian artist Max Pam (Karakoram 2006) and it travels in the time moving towards to his first diaries, in 1970. Through texts and photographies he shows his commitment with the cultures that he has known and he allows us to see the keys of his development as photographer, writer and artist. In many senses, this publication is his own diary journey and offers an intimate, emotional and lyric portrait of the artist, and also about people and places that he has known.

They jury have given special mention to Lillian Bassman & Paul Himmel, published by Kehrer Verlang, ; Portfolio by Robert Frank and Gerhard Steidl, published by Steidl, from Germany; and Past Imperfect by Deborah Turbeville, publishedby Steidl, Germany.

The Prize to the prominent Publishing house of the year has been given to Aperture Foundation in recognition by the publications Kamiatachi, by Eikoh Hosoe; Japanese Photobooks of the 60´s and 70´s, by Ivan Vartanian and Ryuichi Kaneko; Sally Mann: Proud Flesh, by Sally Mann (co-published with Gagosian Gallery); and Summer Nights, Walking, by Robert Adams (co- published with Yale University Art Gallery).

Room Mate Hotels Revelation Award PHotoEspaña 2010 have been given to the artist from Pamplona (Spain),Carlos Irijalba as recognition of his work, the performance process he does before shooting and the forceful result of his pictures. The jury of the prize have been made up Enrique Sarasola, Room Mate Hotels president; Joaquín Ivars, Art and design area director of Universidad Europea de Madrid; and Carlos Sanva, photographer and the winner of the same prize in PHotoEspaña 2009.Endowed with €8,000 euros for the acquisition of works, this prize recognises the oeuvre of a Spanish photographer under age 35 whose work or publication has stood out during the previous year. The winners in the last editions have been Carlos Sanva, Germán Gómez, NOPHOTO, Bleda & Rosa, Joan Morey, Lucía Arjona, Paco Gómez, Carmela García, Isabel Flores, David Jiménez and Xavier Rivas.

Lastly PHotoEspaña and OjodePez Magazine have awarded in 3rd edition of PHotoEspaña OjodePez Human Values Award to the Italian photographer Giuseppe Moccia for his series The Wednesday Kid. The winning work approaches the life of Christopher, a 18-year-old young boy with Down Syndrome. This circumstance positions him at the crossroads of two very different realities. On the one hand, he is able to communicate effectively both verbally and physically. But on the other hand he lacks some of the critical adaptive skills such as self-care, home living and functional academics, daily living skills needed to live, work and play in society. The story of Christopher talks about misunderstanding and vulnerability 03.ENG—90-195:2011 14/06/11 12:14 Page 110

FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE’S COLLECTION GRACIELA ITURBIDE

Graciela Iturbide is one of the most outstanding Mexican photographers on the contemporary world scene. Over a four-decade career she has built an œuvre that is intense and deeply singular, fundamental for under- standing the development of photography in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. Her contribution and talent have been recognised with the recent Born in 1942 in Mexico City. granting (2008) of the , the world’s highest distinction Lives and works in Mexico City. in photography. – Renowned for her portraits of the Seri Indians, who inhabit the desert Graciela Iturbide turned to photography only after region of Sonora, for her vision of the women of Juchitán (on the Isthmus the death of one of her daughters in the 1970s. of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca), and for her fascinating essay on the birds She met her mentor Manuel Alvarez Bravo, the teacher, that she has spent so many years photographing, Graciela Iturbide’s cinematographer and photographer, at university visual itinerary has spanned such contrasting countries as Spain, United and started taking pictures of everyday life, almost States, India, Italy and Madagascar in addition to her native Mexico. Her entirely in black-and-white. Iturbide has been a strong curiosity about the different forms of cultural diversity have turned supporter of feminism since her very first collection travel into a work dynamic through which she expresses her artistic need: in 1979, titled Angel Woman , and in her collection ‘to photograph as a pretext for getting to know’, as she herself puts it. Our Lady of the Iguana , shot in a city where women dominate town life. In Mexico, she is renowned Midway between the documentary and the poetic, her unusual way of for being a founding member of the Mexican Council looking through the lens integrates what has been experienced and what of Photography. Her work is now shown all around has been dreamed in a complex web of historical, social and cultural the world, and she has travelled in , India references. The fragility of ancestral traditions and their difficult sur vival, and the United States where she won the W. Eugene the interaction between nature and culture, the importance of ritual in Smith prize and recently the Hasselblad Foundation everyday body language and the symbolic dimension of landscapes and Photography Award (2008). randomly found objects are paramount to her richly productive career. Her work is characterised by an ongoing dialogue among images, times Portrait of Graciela Iturbide: Manfred Müller. and symbols, in a poetic display in which dream, ritual, religion, travel and community all blend together. The exhibition presents one of the most comprehensive anthologies of her career to date.

Marta Dahó, curator of the exhibition. Graciela Iturbide Exhibition produced by the FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE in collaboration Jano, Ocumichu, Michoacán, Mexico, 1980. with the Rencontres d’Arles. Courtesy of the artist, Graciela Iturbide, 2011. Exhibition venue: Espace Van Gogh. [all photographs]

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Graciela Iturbide Chalma, Mexico, 2008. Self portrait in Trotsky’s House, Coyoacán, Mexico City, 2006.

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Graciela Iturbide Mexico, 1969.

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Graciela Iturbide Frida’s bathroom, Coyoacán, Mexico City, 2006. [for the two photographs]

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Graciela Iturbide Nayarit, Mexico, 1984. Khajuraho, India, 1998.

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Graciela Iturbide Botanical Gardens in Oaxaca, Mexico, 1998-1999. Roma, 2007.

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