City Life Org – The International Center of Photography Presents Graciela Iturbide: Serious Play

Graciela Iturbide, Mujer ángel, Desierto de Sonora, México, 1979. Colecciones Fundación MAPFRE. © Graciela Iturbide

The International Center of Photography | 84 Ludlow Street, New York

On View October 16, 2025-January 12, 2026v

Public Opening October 16, 5–8PM

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is proud to current the first-ever retrospective of Graciela Iturbide’s work in New York, affirming her standing as one of the crucial important and influential photographers of the Twentieth- and Twenty first-centuries. This landmark exhibition, organized in colaboration with Fundación MAPFRE and curated by Carlos Golonet, Chief Curator of Photography at Fundación MAPFRE, options practically 200 images spanning 5 a long time of her groundbreaking profession.

“Graciela Iturbide has constructed a unique world of images that, based on both documentary narrative and poetic imagination, integrates lived experience and dreams into a surprising web of historical, social and cultural references,” mentioned Golonet. “Beginning with participatory observation and then evolving into a continuous exploration of life, Iturbide’s photography is fundamentaly a pretext for learning about the world.”

Born in 1942 in Mexico City, in 1969, on the age of 27, Iturbide enroled on the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos on the Universidad Nacional Autónama de México to turn into a movie director. Soon after enroling she was drawn to pictures then being taught by the Mexican modernist Manuel Álvarez Bravo. From 1970–71 she labored as Bravo’s assistant, accompanying him on numerous photographic journeys all through Mexico. Iturbide has since traveled extensively as wel—inside and past Mexico utilizing her digital camera as a software to higher perceive the native cultures of Mexico, the standard and character of modernity and the intimacies of her personal life.

Though Mexico and its folks—from distant vilagers and farmers to artists and concrete residents—have typically been her major focus, Iturbide’s pictures simply as typically focuses on the expressive potential of the medium itself. With a private type that blends the documentary with the poetic to create a type of magical realism solely her personal, Iturbide’s images have lengthy been outlined by their creative but refined compositions and dramatic, intimate lighting. Whether of the panorama, the constructed atmosphere or the individuals who have made it, her images affirm the potential of pictures to make up to date what’s ancestral and to rework the acquainted into one thing fundamentaly new.

After working with Bravo, Iturbide started exploring Latin America, together with a visit to Cuba and several other to Panama. In 1978 the Ethnographic Archive of the National Indigenous Institute of Mexico commissioned her to {photograph} Mexico’s indigenous inhabitants. This fee resulted in one in all Iturbide’s earliest tasks documenting the Seri Indians, a bunch of fisherman dwelling a nomadic life-style within the Sonoran desert within the northwest of Mexico, alongside the border with Arizona. Iturbide documented the fragility of their ancestral traditions as they struggled to protect their lifestyle for future generations.

Iturbide’s consideration to the particularities of communal life—whereas additionally exploring its mythic undercurrents—can be each replicated and expanded in her subsequent sequence on the Juchitán folks, who type a part of the Zapotec tradition native to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. For practically a decade, from 1979 to 1988, Iturbide documented the native customs and traditions of a group the place ladies occupied central roles, portraying them with out prejudice or stereotype and as a substitute finding the significance of formality in on a regular basis life.

Throughout her profession, Iturbide has targeted on the interplay between nature and tradition, describing the numerous ways in which the panorama can tackle symbolic which means. More than a setting or backdrop, the panorama is known as the bottom upon which which means is created and out of which historical past is fashioned, a truth she found touring via Mexico and the United States, from Spain to Italy and India to Bangladesh. Intimate expressions of thisconviction could be seen in a myriad of sequence, from her botanical images to her documentation of native festivals and non secular ceremonies, every in search of to attach with the previous by animating the current. Iturbide has channeled this fascination with time and the panorama into her sequence of self-portraits, the latest images included within the exhibition.

The expansive scope of Serious Play is knowledgeable by Fundación MAPFRE’s lengthy historical past of each colecting and championing Iturbide’s work—among the many earliest acquisitions by the MAPFRE colection when it fashioned in 2008 and stil the largest colection of her work exterior Mexico—a undertaking that aligns with ICP’s personal mission of supporting socialy involved pictures. By bringing collectively images from the whole thing of her profession, the exhibition supplies ample alternative not solely to evaluate the ful extent of Iturbide’s achievement, however to additionally uncover how her work wil proceed to form the way forward for pictures.

Bob Jeffrey, Chief Executive Office at ICP mentioned, “Graciela Iturbide is without doubt one of the very best photographers, and an inspiration to younger image makers in Mexico and around the world. Iturbide’s retrospective at ICP is a wonderful opportunity to appreciate the ful depth and breadth of her achievement.”

About Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide is thought for her black-and-white photos of the native communities in her native Mexico. In 1979, she revealed Juchitán de las Mujeres, a ebook of images that impressed her lifelong help of feminist causes. Iturbide has photographed within the Sonoran Desert and Juchitán de Zaragoza (Mexico), as wel as in Cuba, Panama, India, Argentina, and the United States. Born in 1942 in Mexico City, Mexico, she studied movie on the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1969, the place she was influenced by the acclaimed Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. She has acquired a number of awards, together with the Hasselblad and the Wiliam Klein Award. This yr, she acquired the Premio Princesa de Asturias 2025.

About Carlos Gollonet

Carlos Golonet (b. Granada, 1962) holds a level in Art History from the University of Granada and is a profession civil servant on the Granada Provincial Council, the place he served as Director of the Publications Department for twenty years. At the identical time, he has developed a profession as an unbiased pictures editor and curator. In 2007, he started colaborating with Fundación MAPFRE to create a pictures colection and develop an intensive pictures program. He is at the moment the Chief Curator of Photography on the establishment. Throughout his skilled profession, he has held different positions of duty, comparable to Provincial Delegate for Culture in Granada.

Since the early Nineteen Nineties, he has curated greater than thirty pictures exhibitions and catalogues devoted to figures comparable to Helen Levitt, Richard Misrach, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Harry Calahan, Nicholas Nixon, Abelardo Morel, Martín Chambi, FazalSheikh, Dayanita Singh, Emmet Gowin, Bruce Davidson and Carlos Pérez Siquier, amongst others. He is at the moment engaged on a retrospective of the American photographer Minor White.

He has revealed quite a few books, articles, and essays in books and specialised publications, and is commonly invited as a speaker, lecturer and jury member for quite a few pictures awards, together with the Spanish National Photography Prize (on two events) and the Cartier-Bresson Award in France, amongst others. In 2010, he acquired the EntreFotos Award for his contributions to pictures.

About Fundación MAPFRE

Fundación MAPFRE is a nonprofit group created by MAPFRE in 1975 to advertise the wel-being of society and residents throughout the corporate’s footprint. Active in 30 international locations, Fundación MAPFRE focuses on 5 areas: Road Safety and Accident Prevention, together with fires, mishaps at residence and drownings; Insurance and Social Protection; Culture; Social Action; and Health Promotion. Please go to for extra details about Fundación MAPFRE.

Exhibition Support

Exhibition organized by Fundación MAPFRE in collaboration with the International Center of Photography.

Exhibitions at ICP are supported, partly, by Caryl Englander, Almudena Legorreta, ICP Board of Trustees, and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the help of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

About The International Center of Photography

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is the world’s main establishment devoted to pictures and visible tradition. Cornell Capa based ICP in 1974 to champion “concerned photography”—socially and politically minded photos that may educate and alter the world. Through exhibitions, education schemes, group outreach, and public packages, ICP presents an open discussion board for dialogue concerning the energy of the picture. Since its inception, ICP has offered greater than 700 exhibitions, supplied hundreds of lessons, and hosted all kinds of public packages. ICP launched its new built-in heart at 84 Ludlow Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in January 2020. ICP pays respect to the unique stewards of this land, theLenape folks, and different Indigenous communities. Visit icp.org to study extra concerning the museum and its packages