Product Description

"The unconscious obsession that we photographers have is that wherever we go we want to find the theme that we carry inside ourselves."

—Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide has found her inner theme photographing the Zapotec women of Juchitan and the Mixtec goat butchers of Oaxaca, in the company of Nobel laureates and world-renowned artists, among mourners at Mexican cemeteries and Indian death houses. Each image stands on its artistic own, but each also tells something about the fascinating artist who made it. In Eyes to Fly With, which includes both iconic images and previously unpublished work, Graciela Iturbide has assembled both a retrospective of her career and an introspective self-portrait—in short, an artist's art book.

In the late 1960s, the great Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo took Iturbide as his assistant. It was a fond and fruitful apprenticeship, but Iturbide eventually sought her own career because, as she says in a conversation with the writer Fabienne Bradu, "I had to have influences, but I also had to suppress them and achieve my own expression." This book pulls together Iturbide's most expressive work, including select self-portraits. Bradu's interview, which appears in both English and Spanish, reveals the stories behind classic images such as "Our Lady of the Iguanas." (Did she pose the iguanas on that woman's head, or was it photographic serendipity?) Bradu also draws out intimate reflections on photography, Mexico, M. A. Bravo, famous friends, indigenous mythology, death, and dreams, so that turning the page to a viejo gazing at airborne gulls, it's impossible not to hear Iturbide's words, "One day... I dreamed a sentence over and over: 'In my country I will plant birds.'" Filled with such personal images and Iturbide's own voice, Eyes to Fly With is the private tour of the artist's apartment that every admirer dreams of taking.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #571082 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 212 pages

Review
"The unconscious obsession that we photographers have is that wherever we go we want to find the theme that we carry inside ourselves." Graciela Iturbide

Customer Reviews

Mystery, Magic, and Cruel Realities: The Art of Graciela Iturbide
Graciela Iturbide finds strange creations through her photographic lens. She is able to document both people and events without manufacturing false perceptions, but she is also able to show us the darker aspects of the human and animal spirit in a way few other photographers achieve. This large, elegantly produced book is a fine survey of her portraits of subjects from Mexico and South America to India and North America, a handsome and varied group of self portraits, and photographic essays on cemeteries and other aspects of death as well as animals and expansive views of birds in flight.

Iturbide studied with Manuel Alvarez Bravo in the late 1960s and his well-known influence is felt in her work. But this fine artist has found her language beyond Bravo and manages to take the raw realism of Bravo's images and transform them with the magic of the spirit world and the mystical elements that inform her photographs. Her images are all in brilliant black and white and for the most part are 'constructed' or posed. The gradations between dark and light add a sense of the surreal to her images, whether the subjects are friends of the artist, couples at weddings, burial sites, East LA Cholas, or her very strange images of women with iguana hats or of her own face inhabited by live snails or wings of dissected birds!

An excellent feature of this book is the addition of Graciela Iturbide's comments on pages facing her photographs, and the book opens with an informative 'Conversation with Graciela' by Fabienne Bradu. This is a sophisticated portfolio of works by one of our contemporary gifted artists. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, April 08

A fine pick.
Graciela Iturbide photographs the Zapotec women of Juchitan and the Mixtee goat butchers of Oaxaca: EYES TO FLY WITH includes a range of black and white images, from previously unpublished works to those she's famous for, and this provides an outstanding monograph of her achievements. Each full-page photo is accompanied by either a quote from her explaining the photo's inspiration or a title line and date, while an article about her and interview with her provide foundations for reference for newcomers. Art library holdings, especially those strong in contemporary photography, will find it a fine pick.