Review : Graciela Iturbide’s MFA Collection 2019
Getting the chance to see the 2019 Graciela Iturbide exhibit at the MFA was extraordinary. I was blown away by the vast range of items that inspired Iturbide and was equally fascinated at the stories she had for each one. Every picture in the exhibit was black and white and usually the perspective of the lens came from some distance away. Few times would Iturbide have photographs of people or things directly head on and in front of her. Her pictures would consists of collections of items on the street, swarms of birds, animals, and groups of people which seemed to have no correlation to each other until you listen to the documentary playing at the end of the exhibit.
In the video, Iturbide explains her journey throughout each one of these photographic “phases”. For example, there were several photographs of death and little children. Iturbide explains in this documentary style interview playing on the wall of the exhibit, that at the start of her career she found a deep passion for photographing children who had died. This interest was sparked due to Iturbide’s own loss of her daughter. She stated frequently that photographing these “angels” gave her peace and a way to cope with the loss of her child. However, she mentioned that one day she came across a family who was on their way to the cemetery to bury their child and upon following them, Iturbide came across a man who had been brutally murdered on the side of the road. Shooting his picture in horror, Iturbide said that she was meant to encounter this man as a sign from God that she should let go of this obsession of photographing “angels” and the concept of death and move on from her traumatic experiences to something different. She then looked upwards and saw an enormous flock of birds covering the expanse of the sky. Simply put, that one moment shot her into her next period of inspiration.
Most of the photographs in the exhibit were of these parajos. Iturbide photographed them in the sky, on the ground, dead, alive, and even featured them in her self portraits. One of her most striking self-portraits is of Iturbide holding one live bird and one dead bird in the place of her eyes. The image of it was so simple yet disturbing. She explains that this self portrait came from the expression, “eyes to fly with” and that the birds represented the ability to learn from life. She found a beauty in them as a metaphor for the natural cycles of the human world. THe birds represented a search for self and soul and were a personal way for her to overcome serious emotional loss.
This exhibit was so fascinating to look at just at how brilliantly Iturbide captured human life. She explained in the video that she doesn’t position items or people in her photos; she photographs what is already there. I found that so crazy because some of her photographs are so outrageously framed that it seems impossible that she could have just come upon an image like that. It is incredible how photographers like her can capture the essence and spirit of a group of people or a culture within a single frame. There was a picture of a woman in a marketplace with three iguanas placed on her head. In the video, Iturbide said that she just came across this woman with the iguanas already on her head and the only direction that she gave the woman was to face the camera. I was baffled at the fact that so much culture could be expressed in one picture that the photographer had not previously put together or had gathered from around the marketplace.
There is always one aspect in each of her photographs that grabs the eye when you look at it. She has a significant image in her pictures that live in both the foreground and the background, so when you look at the photo your eye expands outwards to consume the full picture. Iturbide has a picture of a coat hanging on a branch with birds flying above it. Her artistic pull towards the cycle of natural life comes off very strongly in all of her pictures. From photographing the deaths of people at various ages to photographing the idea of death in nature or with man-made items, Iturbide manages to present a small snapshot into the beauty of the shortness of life.
There’s a popular saying that anyone can learn how to use a camera and call themselves a photographer but only a select few can consider themselves as artists. I find this to be so true. It’s one thing to take a picture of something you see on the street, but to find the significance behind what you’re seeing and photographing is a completely different story. Iturbide’s skill in photographing the life in still objects is something that I’ve never really witnessed in the work of many other photographers. And as a layperson looking at her work from a fairly unbiased perspective, this exhibit was the first time I actually understood the meaning behind any photograph without having to over-analyze it first. I look forward to exploring more of her portfolio and seeing how her work progressed from the time she picked up the camera to when she will eventually put it down.