Graciela Iturbide: Juchitan by Judith Keller

Product Details

Synopsis

Between 1979 and 1988, the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942) made a series of visits to Juchitan, Mexico, where, in her words, she photographed the way of life there "in complicity with the people." Located in the state of Oaxaca, Juchitan is an ancient, communal, matriarchal society. It is also an open, fiercely independent, fiesta-loving city. Since the early twentieth century, the women of Juchitan--their dress and manner--have been national symbols, and Iturbide's photographs capture them in public and in private as they conduct their lives in this ancient city in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
The Women of Juchitan is published to accompany the exhibition The Goat's Dance: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide, which opens at the J. Paul Getty Museum on December 18, 2007.

Publishers Weekly

In this slender volume to accompany a J. Paul Getty Museum exhibition, photographer Iturbide captures Mexico's matriarchal Zapotec village, Juchitán, from 1979 to 1988. (Those unfamiliar with Iturbide or this indigenous Oaxaca State culture may recognize these women's elaborate lace costume and headdresses from Frida Kahlo's paintings.) With closeup views of a closed society, Iturbide's work is photography at its most intimate. Shot from below, images of women in festival dress and others such as the famous Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas, a portrait of a woman sporting a hat of live iguanas, are also exemplars of photography at its most monumental. Iturbide's subjects bathe, nurse, drink and sometimes pose with expressions that are as warm as the Mexico City native's compositions are artful. At times these images haunt, such as in Cemetario, where a woman carries firewood across a cemetery while swallows fleet around like so many spirits departing the earth. Mostly they delight as in Juchiteca con cerveza, in which a smiling woman of ample girth imbibes and laughs with brio. A brief essay by Judith Keller provides additional background on Juchitán's culture and Iturbide's life. One hopes this slender volume is just the beginning of larger recognition for one of photography's greatest. 50 b&w plates. (Jan.)

Biography

Judith Keller is associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum.