Renowned Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide has won a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, top photography awards in France and Japan and been inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum.
But for fans of the heavy metal band Rage Against the Machine, it is her 1979 black-and-white photo “Mujer Angel” shot along the Arizona/Sonora border that strikes a chord.
The photograph is of a Seri woman carrying a tape recorder she had traded for handicrafts with Americans. The woman, according to the photographer, “looked as if she could fly off into the desert.” Rage Against the Machine used the image on the cover of their 1997 single “Vietnow.”
“Mujer Angel” is among Iturbide’s photographs in Etherton Gallery’s new exhibit, “Graciela Iturbide: Sueños, Símbolos, y Narración,” which opened on Sept. 20 and continues through Nov. 26.
Iturbide took up photography in the early 1970s and has been documenting, mostly in black-and-white images, the lives of Indigenous and Mexican people. Her subjects have included strong feminist statements through the women of the Zapotec Indians in Oaxaca and the Seri Indians along the Arizona/Sonora border, as well as an early-career series focusing on death, mostly of infants and children. Iturbide, the mother of three, lost her daughter in 1970 when the girl was 6 years old.
Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide speaks during an interview with the Associated Press at her home in Mexico City in 2015. Iturbide is known for black-and-white photos of Mexican people and landscapes.
Iturbide, 80, will be in Tucson this weekend for two events surrounding the exhibit.
She will speak at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography on campus, 1030 N. Olive Road, at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 23. CCP was the first public institution to acquire her work. Admission to the talk is free.
She also will be on hand for the exhibit’s opening reception from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 24, at Etherton Gallery, 340 S. Convent Ave., in Barrio Viejo downtown.
For more information, visit ethertongallery.com.
