Photographer Graciela Iturbide: “Working with my heart is the only rule – nothing else” | Photography

IIf you are familiar with contemporary Latin American photography, you have probably encountered the unforgettable image of a Zapotec woman crowned with a live iguana, radiating calm and unwavering dignity. The takeover of Juchitan in 1979 by Graciela Iturbide, Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas, was neither planned nor organized. They were captured on impulse, guided by an artist’s instinct and a deep respect for their subject, and have since become a touchstone of Mexican visual culture and feminist photography.

“What drives my work is surprise, wonder, dreams, and imagination,” Iturbide recently told The Guardian.

In fact, surprise has been the driving force behind her entire career. Born in 1942 in Mexico City, Iturbide was in her late twenties, married and raising three children, when she heard a radio advertisement for the Center for Film Studies at the Autonomous University of Mexico. On a whim, she applied and, under the mentorship of legendary photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, began a journey that would make her one of the most respected photographers in Latin America.

Iturbide’s photographs inhabit the space between document and dream. It is grounded in reality but imbued with poetic feeling, revealing the secrets of everyday life. Her best-known works embody the spirit of community life and indigenous traditions in Mexico, while her series that have been transmitted abroad in countries such as Cuba, India, Argentina and the United States also occupy an important place within her extensive body of work. At 83 years old, Iturbide remains a vital force in photography, having won the Hasselblad Prize, the William Klein Prize, and earlier this year she was honored with the Premio Princesa de Asturias.

Through January 2026, the International Center of Photography in New York will present Graciela Iturbide: Serious Play, a career-spanning exhibition of nearly two hundred works drawn from the Fundación MAPFRE’s extensive collection. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience the full range of her vision—from early portraits to later landscape meditations—most of which are rendered in black and white, the visual language she adopted from her formative years of study with Álvarez Bravo.

“The color seems unreal to me,” Iturbide said. “I work in black and white, I dream in black and white, and I shoot in black and white because it’s an abstraction of everything.”

Far from monotonous, her monochromatic images ooze depth and soul, the result of an intimate and immersive approach. To document indigenous communities, Iturbide lived among her subjects, participated in their daily routines and rituals, and built trust over months and sometimes years, as she did while creating her acclaimed book of photographs Juchitán de las Mujeres (1979–1986), to which she devoted nearly a decade.

In 1978, a commission from Mexico’s National Indigenous Institute took Iturbide to the Sonoran Desert, where she photographed the Seri people, nomadic hunter-gatherers striving to preserve the traditions of their ancestors. From this project emerged the photograph Mujer Ángel, Desierto de Sonora, México (1979), on view at ICP, which the artist describes as a gift from the desert itself, because she cannot remember the exact moment she captured it, a testament to the deep and intuitive relationship she maintains with the places and people she depicts.

While various elements of Mexican indigenous societies, their rituals and festivals, flora and fauna, and overall landscape, feature prominently in Iturbide’s works, portraits of women, such as Vendora de Zacate, Oaxaca, Mexico (1974), have remained a central and resonant focus throughout her practice.

“Do you know why my photographs of women traveled around the world? Because I lived with them, went to the market, sold gitos with them, slept in their homes. They became my collaborators. It’s my way of creating camaraderie, a feeling of complicity,” she explains. “I always shoot with people’s consent and cooperation.”

The symbolic image of a woman crowned with an iguana also emerged from this approach. “I would sit with the women in the market so they could get to know me, and I would accompany them to sell their chickens and iguanas,” Iturbide recalls. “Suddenly, I saw this woman carrying a live iguana on her head and asked to photograph her. I only had one roll of film, and of the twelve frames I took, all of them were moving and laughing, except one, which captured her dignity. Now there is a large statue of her in a square in Juchitán, where countless political demonstrations are taking place. They made little clay statues of her, embroidering her image on Huipiles, they even appear in murals in Los Angeles and San Francisco. This photo did not ask for my permission; She wants to fly, and that’s okay, and it’s okay to go wherever she wants.

While spontaneity plays a central role in Iturbide’s practice, her work is also rooted in careful preparation and respect for the people and cultures she depicts. “I never work with texts,” she explained. “I just catch what comes out of the blue, what my eyes see and my heart feels, but I always read extensively about the places I visit and talk to elders so they can share their stories and gradually help me build my understanding of their culture.”

This balance between intuition and intention extends to her studio, where film development unfolds like a quiet ritual. “After shooting, I go home. I’m still working with the film: developing it, reviewing the call sheets, organizing them. For me, it’s a ritual, arriving, checking my negatives, selecting them,” she said. This deliberate process reflects the contemplative nature of her images, revealing the reverence underlying her practice.

Iturbide’s self-portraits, many of which will be shown at ICP, also arise from her instinctive impulse. “I never prepare my selfies; it’s something that happens in the moment, usually when I’m in a little crisis,” she explained. “For example, in Eyes That Fly?, Coyoacán, Mexico (1991), a hummingbird came into my house and died. I was in crisis, wondering whether I would continue filming, so I quickly went to the market, bought a live bird, and put both of them over my eyes, all in a completely unconscious way.

In recent years, as security concerns have made photography in Mexico’s rural towns increasingly difficult, Iturbide’s focus has shifted beyond indigenous communities to include landscapes, nature, and broader implications for humanity across different countries. “In some ways, I think I’m now turning my attention to the origins of humankind,” she said. However, her practice remains as spontaneous and heart-centered as ever. “I may be wrong, but I have no rules,” she said. “Working with my heart is the only rule – nothing else.”