Hardcover
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 978-0292714625
Dimensions: 12 X 12 in
Pages: 212 Pages
Graciela Iturbide has discovered her core theme in photographing Zapotec women of Juchitán and Mixtec goat butchers of Oaxaca, as well as mourners at Mexican cemeteries and Indian death houses. Each image stands on its artistic own, but each also reveals something about the fascinating artist who created it. In Eyes to Fly With, which features both iconic images and previously unpublished work, Graciela Iturbide has assembled a retrospective of her career and an introspective self-portrait—essentially, an artist's art book.
In the late 1960s, the eminent Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo hired Iturbide as his assistant. It was a kind and productive apprenticeship, but Iturbide eventually pursued her own path because, as she explains in a conversation with writer Fabienne Bradu, "I had to have influences, but I also had to suppress them and achieve my own expression." This book gathers Iturbide's most expressive work, including selected self-portraits. Bradu's interview, presented in both English and Spanish, uncovers the stories behind iconic images like "Our Lady of the Iguanas." (Did she pose the iguanas on that woman's head, or was it photographic serendipity?) Bradu also elicits intimate reflections on photography, Mexico, indigenous mythology, death, and dreams, so that as you turn the page to a viejo gazing at airborne gulls, it's impossible not to hear Iturbide's words, "One day... I dreamed a sentence over and over: 'In my country I will plant birds.'" Filled with such personal images and Iturbide's own voice, Eyes to Fly With offers the private tour of the artist's apartment that every admirer dreams of experiencing.
