Graciela Iturbide's Mexico

The Mexican Cultural Institute is proud to welcome renowned Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide for an in-depth conversation with curator Kristen Gresh, as they present the works and themes of the exhibition Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico, opening at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., on February 28, 2020.

About the Exhibit

Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico, an exhibition of 140 personal and poetic photographs, bears witness to the rich and complex culture of the artist’s homeland. As a documentary photographer, Iturbide transforms ordinary observation into powerful and provocative art. She integrates herself into the communities she photographs, resulting in images of unparalleled sensitivity. Eschewing stereotypical narratives frequently used to represent Mexico, she instead presents nuanced and multifaceted insights through her signature black-and-white gelatin silver prints.

This monumental survey of photographs of Mexico, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, spans Iturbide’s career with images from 1969 through 2007. It encompasses compelling portrayals of indigenous and urban men and women, explorations of symbolism in nature and rituals, and haunting photographs of personal items left after the death of Frida Kahlo. Iturbide’s most extensive United States exhibition in more than two decades, Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico will be on view at the National Museum of Women in the Arts through May 25, 2020.

About Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide, born in Mexico City in 1942, is one of Latin America’s most important and influential living photographers. She began her career in the early 1970s as a student of Mexican modernist photographer Manual Alvarez Bravo and later became his assistant. Iturbide’s photographs tell a visual story of Mexico—a country in constant transition, defined by tensions between urban and rural life and indigenous and modern life. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Hasselblad Foundation Photography Award, and her works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. Iturbide lives and works in Coyoacán, Mexico.

About Kristen Gresh

Kristen Gresh is the Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gresh has curated She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World and Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico, and authored their accompanying award-winning publications. Other recent exhibitions include Viewpoints: Photographs from the Howard Greenberg Collection and Reimagining Home: Photographs by Bahman Jalali and Gohar Dashti. Her forthcoming project, done in collaboration with the Princeton University Art Museum, is titled Life Magazine and the Power of Photography. She has received multiple grants and awards for her research and publications including a Magnum Foundation Legacy Grant, Terra Foundation Grant, Rockefeller Grant, Fulbright Award, IndieFab Foreword’s Book of the Year awards “Nonfiction Editor’s Choice Prize 2013,” and the ICMA Award of Excellence in the Photo Book 2019.