A woman, photographed from behind, is moving forward with intent through rocky terrain towards open, inhospitable land. Ahead of her lies the outline of bare-looking, small mountains.
Sean Sheehan
Her long dark hair hangs down loosely to below the waist and her wide skirt may be white but looks as gray as the sky in the distance. She holds tightly what used to be called a boom box, a portable stereo for playing cassettes of music, and its presence in the scene seems as inexplicable as the woman herself. There is silence in the landscape and in the human figure whose arms are positioned to help balance her body as she strides forward.
The photograph is titled Mujer angel (Angel wWoman) and, in the words of the photographer, ‘It was like a gift life gave me. There was the music from her cassette, her hair was all tangled up—and it seemed as though she was flying’. It was taken in 1979 and, in an interview over thirty years later, she recalled how it was taken.
Angel woman is probably the most famous photograph taken by Graciela Iturbide, born in Mexico in 1942 and where she still lives. It combines enigma with beauty in a way that sums up the poetic strangeness in her work. “I just take photographs of what surprises me and what I like”, she says, but the simple truth of this does little to explain the mystery that lies unspoken in her photography.
A selection of her photographs, 65 of them, are on show on the top floor of The Photographers Gallery in London and they are compellingly good. She makes pictures of appearances and captures their depth in a way that colour photography could not; colour would conceal what lies in the shadows between the shades of black and white. Death, silence and introspection lurk disturbingly in her pictures and colour would only hide this as well.
There is a severity in Iturbide’s photographs and a degree of unpolished harshness in her pictures whether they be of the Seri people of the Sonaran desert or other indigenous people, the Mexican-American cholo gangs of Los Angeles and Tijuana or the cacti of the botanical gardens of Oaxaca. The environments that her photos inhabit are as stark and austere as the landscapes in a spaghetti Western and in her later work it is places not people that her camera focuses on, though what remains constant is the play of light and darkness.
The curators’ short talk is played on a monitor in the exhibition and it serves as an excellent introduction to the body of Iturbide’s work and her achievement.
Graciela Iturbide: “Shadowlines” is at The Photographers Gallery until 22 September 2024. General admission is £8, discounted for students, jobseekers, disabled and senior citizens, and is free on Fridays after 5pm. Admission covers all the exhibitions taking place at the time of your visit and currently there is also House of Bondage.
(Photos provided by the gallery and authorized for publication)
.jpg)
