Images of the Spirit

by Graciela Iturbide (Photographer), Roberto Tejada (Preface), Alfredo López Austin (Epilogue)

Graciela Iturbide makes subtle yet powerful photographs that blend evocative scenes, primarily the cultures of her native Mexico, with her own deeply personal vision. Images of the Spirit , the first major publication of Iturbide's photography, demonstrates how in her dreamlike encounters with what may first appear to be ordinary, she perceives the surreal and the marvelous. Iturbide's work is a mixture of history, lyricism, and portraiture, sometimes informed by the art of Mexico's photographic master, Manuel Álvarez Bravo. In Iturbide's photographs, she combines the story of a culture in transition with issues of identity, diversity, and selfhood.

As the poet and critic Roberto Tejada points out in his Preface, "Sidelong Mirrors and Invisible Masks," Iturbide's photographs "underline time and again the rift between belonging and citizenship, rendered often against a backdrop of Mexican icons or heroes--be it the frail displacement of a rural campesino in Puebla, or the triumph of locals in East Los Angeles." Tejada who has lived in Mexico for the last ten years, provides a trenchant illumination of this Mexican photographer's use of her country's lore and stories of conquest, it's pre-Hispanic past, its indigenous visual vocabulary, and its centuries of tradition and ceremony, often infused with Christian iconography.

Writer and scholar Alfredo López Austin is an anthropologist studying Latin American cultures. In his series of letters to Iturbide, which form the poetic Epilogue to Images of the Spirit , he envisions her "on a promontory set over the world in such a way as to see from one ocean to the other, to approach the vault of heaven and to surpass the artificial boundaries." Reflecting on the breadth of her expansive, insightful mind while invoking many narrative voices and identities drawn from Mexico's richly vibrant mythologies, López Austin shows us how Iturbide's photographs mirror the artist herself. Through his writing Iturbide is revealed as observer, searcher, affirmer.

Images of the Spirit is produced at the highest level of the printer's art, enhancing the resonance of Iturbide's imagery, and the luminosity of her vision. Iturbide's compassion and dedication to her native land and its people make Images of the Spirit a power evocation of the underlying forces inspiring the complex, diverse, and ever-changing cultural landscape of Mexico.

This aperture publication accompanies a traveling exhibition that opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published November 29, 1996

About the author

Graciela Iturbide is a Mexican photographer. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in many major museum collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently read a graphic biography Photographic: The Life of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña, which led me to look at a couple volumes of her collected photographs. This, Images of the Spirit, is an amazing one. Iturbide in this collection reveals her passions about the various cultures of her native Mexico. This is the first major publication of her work, which was published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1996. The work feels lyrical, magical, focused on the range of people she meets in a rural campesino in Puebla to families in East Los Angeles, though she would prefer the descriptor poetic to magical.

Here’s a range of them, but I would order the book (as I have done) or at least test-drive it from the library:

https://www.google.com/search?q=image...

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collection of photographs based on a Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibit of the work of Graciela Iturbide. Black and white, striking images of life in Mexico - sometimes other Latin American countries, some in East Los Angeles. Strong women, interesting interplay with the land and with animals, iconography of Catholicism and indigenous traditions. I liked it a lot.

[Roniq · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw her speak at Seattle Art Museum where she patiently signed books. This one is a beautiful photographic trip through her native Mexico. Beautiful images.

[Rob GQ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing Mexican photographer