Graciela Iturbide グラシエラ・イトゥルビデ

“For me color is fantasy, I see reality in black and white.” Within the abstracted world offered by this absence of color, Graciela Iturbide observes and understands, experiences and interprets, all that surrounds her by capturing everyday events with spontaneity and surprise.

Her universe is inhabited by those who live in the sand, Zapotec women, and muxes sharing their traditions, rituals, and popular fiestas, pulsing with the strength of Mexico’s indigenous communities. In amongst these tales are metaphors of life and death: flocks of birds flitting across the skies, slithering snakes, herds of goats poised for a feast.

Iturbide’s photographs are poetic portraits in which nature and humans converge to create beautiful images of a personal world rich in symbolism and imagination. With eyes wide open, she travels to lands of distant cultures before returning to other territories to trace her own footprints, dreams, and obsessions.

Her sense of wonder for botany is revealed in arid landscapes and lush gardens, in the whimsical shapes of plants, and in the fragility of trees which, alongside silent stones, like sculptures or silent witnesses, gradually find their place in an abstract language.

This exhibition, the first retrospective of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide held in Japan, shows six decades of her remarkable work, offering a glimpse of a unique world seen through her eyes.
Text by Elena Navarro