Graciela Iturbide’s Photography
by Juliana Kolc-Dass
November 20, 2025
by Juliana Kolc-Dass
November 20, 2025
Iturbide, Graciela. Mujer Ángel, Desierto de Sonora, México.
Google Arts & Culture
Google Arts & Culture
“Graciela Iturbide: Serious Play,” now on view at the International Center of Photography, offers a glimpse into Graciela Iturbide's photographic arc. Showcasing 200 images from the 1970s to the present, the retrospective reflects the connection between cultural identity, indigeneity, and Mexican society as a whole. Collaborating with Fundación MAPFRE, a Spanish nonprofit organization promoting social well-being, the display embodies the series’ message — history is not erased by myth, but enriched and intensified through cultural passion and sacredness.
“Mujer Angel, Desierto de Sonora, México, 1979” displays a Seri woman indigenous to Northwestern Mexico. Secluded in the Sonoran Desert, she pulls her weight through the vast, empty landscape. Her ethereal stance emulates Columbia in “American Progress” (1872) by John Gast, characterized by the “manifest destiny” era of colonial western expansion across the United States. Her white dress and physical position replicate Columbia’s holy appearance; however, her intentions juxtapose the subject’s colonial context. Facing out towards the land, the Seri woman represents her community by rejecting essentialism, the mistaken belief that Indigenous groups share a single, unchanging culture and adhere to so-called primitive lifestyles. She holds a portable cassette player, not denying Western influence but defying false perceptions of Indigenous people globally. Modernity and tradition, from the cassette player to the image’s black-and-white coloring, intertwine fascinatingly, in opposition to rigid colonial belief. Iturbide also emphasizes the subject’s deep connection to the desert land she travels through, capturing just one part of a much larger journey for the Seri woman — a fight for agency over her land and culture, both from the government and from society’s false lens. With this, Iturbide combats a colonial past, challenges traditional perceptions of indigeneity and highlights the historical efforts of Indigenous communities to preserve and protect their land in the face of institutional harm.
“Graciela Iturbide: Serious Play” is on view at the International Center of Photography until Jan 12, 2026.