‘The camera is an excuse to share the life of the people, the rhythm and sympathy of festivals, to discover my country.’ So said the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942), who infuses the textures of everyday life with a fantastical sensibility. Much of her most powerful work, often featuring lone inscrutable figures against a distinctively Mexican backdrop, bears the Surreal influence of her mentor and compatriot Manuel Álvarez Bravo, though she developed an almost folkloric style of her own – as can be seen in Our Lady of the Iguanas (1979), in which a woman crowned by living lizards stares confidently out above the camera. This exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) – which has travelled from the San Diego Museum of Art and largely comprises loans from the Fundación Mapfre, a non-profit that aims to improve well-being in Spain and Latin America – brings together more than 150 black-and-white photographs (11 July–29 November).
Find out more from SFMOMA’s website.
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