Sbetween the sky and the tierra, aquí and en other lights, tierra quemada and pavimentos or clouds of pájaros, the mirada aguda and penetrante de Graciela Iturbide ha captured the extrañeza of the world. This is the eye, to the incongruent one, to the poetry that is ordinarily written, it has to do with the limits of documentary photography, it orients itself to the world of the earth, it has a magical and visionary realism.
An important figure in Latin American photography, formed in the 70s by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and winner of the Hasselblad Prize in 2008, Mexican photography is the object of an extensive retrospective at the Cartier Foundation, which includes more than 200 images, from many “iconic” images to date The most recent photographs, including a series in color (made especially for exposure) that were captured in white and black, were already captured in “formas, lights and darkness”.
“Busqué la sorpresa en l’ordinario, algo que podría haber encontrado en anyquier otro lugar”, explains quién dio an alma extra a Those who live in the sand, (a series produced in 1978 in the community of Séri, between the Indies of the Sonoran Desert), but also to the cholos, Chicanos sordomudos in the west of United States (White Fence Gang, 1986-1989), and who was immortalized by the women of Juchitán, hereditary of the Zapoteca culture, in the Valley of Oxaca (México).
La sorpresa y lo insólito fueron su estímulo, su brújula, pendante alldas sus peregrinaciones, en México et ambién en Germany, España, Ecuador, Japan, Estados Unidos, India, Madagascar, Argentina, Perú y Panama, entre los años 70 y 90.
"Photography is a ritual for me. Dirty with my camera, observe, capture the most mysterious part of the man, enter into darkness, reveal, elect the symbol", dice Graciela Iturbide. It is also understood that it is extraneous that it comes from our photographs, that, with its simplistic meaning, its aura is “mítica” and its “disturbing extrañeza”, much more than all of the documentary photography… The famous Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas coronada de iguanas (vivas) has the aspect and the timeless door of a queen; also for young people with a zapoteco suit, and all women and indigenous men who have been immortalized: Hierática images in the dry landscape of the great desert landscapes or photos in apretadoes encuadres, tienen esa extraña presencia ausente de los vivos magnificada en seres de lyenda…
This time is most evident in the landscapes of all human presence and in the strangest natures of the dead, that rose to the abstract, realized in the last very decades: the sky was ennegrecid by the pájaros, the fields of girasoles marched, the tocones of trees, zarzas that invade the arenas, rocks with heads or with trapos… so many fantasmas or memento mori: the death happened in the dry regions and eminent symbols of Graciela Iturbide…
Showroom Graciela Iturbide – Heliotropo 37
Until May 29
Fundación Cartier – Paris – www.fondation.cartier.com
Stéphanie Dulout