Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide’s (b. 1942) photographs focus on the landscapes she has experienced in her extensive travels, photographs that map a search for one’s identity in the world, from Mexico to India to Florida.

“Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide is one of the finest practitioners of black and white photography in the world today. Her classic images of Mexico document a culture in flux between tradition and modernity, as collected in the published monograph, Images of the Spirit: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide.” (Aperture, 1996).

Graphicstudio published Iturbide’s works as photogravures, an etching process that produces photographic prints of exceptional tonal beauty, texture, detail and longevity.

Garden

With five black and white photogravures by Graciela Iturbide, a drypoint by Francisco Toledo and texts of legend and history in English, Spanish and Zapotec, the portfolio Garden celebrates the new Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca, Mexico. Set on the grounds of a 16th century Dominican monastery in the heart of Oaxaca City, the garden is a museum of prehispanic plants and the culture and ethnography that surround them. The portfolio was created in collaboration with Oaxaca resident Toledo, his close friend Iturbide, and Graphicstudio, to support and nurture the establishment and continued growth of the Ethnobotanical Garden.

Espiritu Santo

At Graphicstudio's invitation, Iturbide traveled to Tampa to produce a portfolio of six photogravures of contemporary Florida, accompanied with text from the first expedition of Hernan de Soto to Florida in 1553. Espiritu Santo is a layering of image and history, as a present day Hispanic woman meets a Spaniard of the sixteenth century, on Tampa Bay, the site of de Soto's first landing, which he christened "Espiritu Santo”.

Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas, Mujer Angel, Centinela

In 1979 Iturbide was invited by Francisco Toledo to photograph the Juchitán people who form part of the Zapotec culture native to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Iturbide’s series began in 1979 and resulted in a publication in 1988, Juchitán de las Mujeres. In 1996, Graphicstudio collaborated with Iturbide to produce a selection of these photographs as photogravures. In such iconic images as Mujer Angel (Angel woman), which captures a Seri Indian woman in traditional dress walking into the Sonoran Desert, boom box in hand, and Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas), in which a Juchitán merchant wears a headdress of live iguanas, Iturbide transforms the ordinary into the surreal.

 

Further Resources

Artist's Site: gracielaiturbide.org

Printmaking + Sculpture Terms

Printmaking Glossary

Sculpture Glossary

Sales

For sales, or more information about an edition, please contact Graphicstudio at (813) 974-3503 or gsoffice@usf.edu.

Copyright + Reproduction

Images of the artwork are jointly owned by the artist and Graphicstudio. Reproduction of any kind including electronic media must be expressly approved by Graphicstudio.