Graciela Iturbide: The Goat’s Dance
Graciela Iturbide’s photographs juxtapose the contemporary with the timeless, said Lynell George in the Los Angeles Times. In one, a Mexican woman in silhouette, “dressed in what appears to be a traditional costume, descends a hill into a spreading valley
Graciela Iturbide: The Goat’s Dance
Getty Center, Los Angeles
Through April 13
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Graciela Iturbide’s photographs juxtapose the contemporary with the timeless, said Lynell George in the Los Angeles Times. In one, a Mexican woman in silhouette, “dressed in what appears to be a traditional costume, descends a hill into a spreading valley, improbably carrying a boombox.” In another, a young man shows off a back-filling tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Mixteca women in Oaxaca slaughter goats, and young girls in East L.A. “throw gang signs” in front of a mural of famous Mexican revolutionaries Benito Juárez, Emiliano Zapata, and Pancho Villa. “For more than 30 years, Iturbide has been working the realms of dust, sweat, concrete, chain-link, and bleaching sun,” capturing everyday moments in the lives of her people on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. “Her work reflects an amalgam of influences—there are echoes of Mexican printmakers and muralists and a slithery sense of surrealism.” But almost every photograph contains a prominent element of surprise.
In Mexico, of course, there are endless opportunities to “take pictures of the outrageous and bizarre,” said Hunter Drohojowska-Philp in Artnet.com. Yet Iturbide combines “formal elegance with an eye for subjects” on the borders
of society, particularly Indian communities in Mexico and Mexican communities within the United States. “Her photographs have a steely edge, yet she also evinces compassion for subjects,” and she never descends into cliché or condescends. In this sense, her pictures closely resemble those by famed Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, under whose tutelage she began working in 1970. Where Bravo is well known, however, this exhibition is the “first survey in this country” dedicated to Iturbide. Judging from the works on view, she should soon be much better known.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Today's political cartoons - October 6, 2024
Cartoons Sunday's cartoons - Sunday scaries, in-fighting, and more
By The Week US Published
-
5 fact-checked cartoons about the VP debate
Cartoons Artists take on civil disagreements, admissions, and more
By The Week US Published
-
The Japanese villages where time stood still
The Week Recommends Up to 200 villagers cooperate to thatch a roof in a single day, preserving this beautiful tradition
By The Week UK Published
-
If/Then
feature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.
By The Week Staff Last updated