Fotograf Magazine

In her most famous photographs, Graciela Iturbide captured grand and graceful women. One of these she called Mujer Ángel (Woman Angel) and thus transformed her into a symbol of the Native American people of the Sonora desert in northern Mexico. We see the figure of a woman walking away from us along a steep slope towards a large desert horizon, softly backlit by the setting sun, dressed in a flowing long white skirt and holding a tape recorder. It is the tape deck that captures our interest and causes us to pay even more attention to her strange hurried ecstasy – it is a contrasting element, one which paradoxically makes her even more timeless and unreal. Punctum par excellence, one could say. Another Indian woman is depicted from a low angle; her expression could be described as superiority, if only it did not appear so unreal (or even surreal) – Nuestra senora de las iguanas (Our Lady of the Iguanas) is wearing a mad garland of live iguanas on her head. She is one of the ”children of tigers and other beasts“, in other words a member of the Zapotec tribe, which lives in the southern Mexican province of Oaxaca.