Graciela Iturbide

Under the gaze of famed Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, this project vividly portrays the lives of several residents of the Chicano community in Boyle Heights, located in Eastside Los Angeles. The title refers to the historical street gang known as White Fence that has held established territory in Boyle Heights since 1900. They were one of the most violent Eastside gangs of the 20th century and among the first to use weapons.
Starting with the photographs that Iturbide took in 1986 on assignment for the magazine A Day in the Life of America and culminating in a reunion in 2019, this publication is divided into two volumes, housed in a slipcase. The first book presents the series of images captured in 1986, 1989, 2018 and 2019. The second volume includes the essay White Fence Revisited by Alfonso Morales Carrillo describing both the development of this photographic series and the historic background it ultimately conveys: the formation and persistence of communities of Mexican descent north of the Rio Grande. White Fence is an emotional visual journey through decades of history: an intimate exploration of identity that connects the past and present of this fascinating community in Los Angeles.
Graciela Iturbide was born in 1942 in Mexico City. Her photographic documentation of Indigenous tribes of Mexico resulted in the publication of her book Juchitán de las Mujeres in 1989. Between 1980 and 2000, Iturbide continued to gain international recognition and was invited to work in various places, including Cuba, East Germany, India, Madagascar, Hungary, France and the United States.

Through more than 200 photographs, this luxurious volume presents Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s most iconic works alongside an important selection of previously unpublished photographs and a series of color photographs specially commissioned by the Fondation Cartier.
Working mainly in black and white, Iturbide has explored the cohabitation between ancestral traditions and Catholic rites in Mexico, humanity’s relationship with death and the roles of women in society. In recent years, her photographs have emptied themselves of human presence, revealing the enigmatic life of objects and nature. In addition to her stark images of her homeland, this book also includes images from her series in India, the United States and elsewhere. Heliotropo 37, named for the photographer’s address in Mexico City, also contains an interview with the photographer by French essayist Fabienne Bradu, an original short story by Guatemalan writer Eduardo Halfon and a photo-portrait of Iturbide’s studio by Mexican photographer Pablo López Luz.
One of the most influential photographers active in Latin America today, Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide (born 1942) began studying photography in the 1970s with legendary photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Seeking “to explore and articulate the ways in which a vocable such as 'Mexico' is meaningful only when understood as an intricate combination of histories and practices,” as she puts it, Iturbide has created a nuanced and sensitive documentary record of contemporary Mexico. She lives and works in Mexico City.

This is the largest survey yet published on the work of Graciela Iturbide, the most acclaimed photographer working in Latin America and winner of the 2008 Hasselblad Award. It includes 180 representative photographs spanning her career, focusing on her best-known work, such as Frida Kahlo's Bedroom, Those Who Live in the Sand and Juchitán.

Over the course of her four-decade career, Iturbide has built up a poetic language of images and symbols; a consistent preoccupation is the juxtaposition between urban and rural life. The subjects of her black-and-white photography mostly reside in Latin America but encompass India, Europe and Asia as well. This volume provides an essential overview of her accomplishment.

Graciela Iturbide, best known for her iconic photographs of Mexican indigenous women, has engaged with her homeland as a subject for the past 50 years in images of great variety and depth. The intensely personal, lyrical photographs collected and interpreted in this book show that, for Iturbide, photography is a way of life—as well as a way of seeing and understanding Mexico, with all its beauties, rituals, challenges and contradictions.

The Mexico portrayed here is a country in constant transition, defined by tensions and exchanges between new and old, urban and rural, traditional and modern. Iturbide’s deep connection with her subjects—among them political protests, celebrations and rituals, desert landscapes, cities, places of burial and Mexico’s artistic heritage—produces indelible images that encompass dreams, symbols, reality and daily life.

Published to accompany the first major museum exhibition of Iturbide’s work on the East Coast, this volume presents more than 100 beautifully reproduced black-and-white photographs, accompanied by illuminating essays inviting readers to share in Graciela Iturbide’s personal artistic journey through the country she knows so intimately.

One of the most influential photographers active in Latin America today, Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide (born 1942) began studying photography in the 1970s with legendary photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Seeking “to explore and articulate the ways in which a vocable such as 'Mexico' is meaningful only when understood as an intricate combination of histories and practices,” as she puts it, Iturbide has created a nuanced and sensitive documentary record of contemporary Mexico.