Graciela Iturbide: Vintage
(Collaboration with Rose Gallery)
NEW YORK — Graciela Iturbide: Vintage, on view at Throckmorton Fine Art from December 4, 2025, through February 28, 2026, focuses on recently discovered works created by the artist between the late 1960s and early 1980s. The exhibition offers a profound exploration of Iturbide’s early artistic journey and her deep immersion in the diverse cultures of her homeland of Mexico. Having trained under the renowned Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Iturbide developed a signature style that blends a documentary approach with a deeply personal and poetic vision, capturing the complexities, rituals, and spirit of Mexico in powerful, evocative images. She was recently awarded the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, .an honor that recognizes her five-decade career capturing Mexico’s cultural essence and global human experiences. A concurrent retrospective, Graciela Iturbide: Serious Play, is on view at the International Center of Photography in New York through January 12, 2026. The exhibition at Throckmorton Fine Art will open with a reception on December 4 from 6-8 p.m.
A talk with the artist will be held at the gallery on December 9 from 6-8 p.m. Graciela Iturbide: Vintage, presented in collaboration with ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica, will feature vintage prints of iconic images from her foundational series, including her work with the indigenous Seri people in the Sonoran Desert, where she documented their daily lives and customs, including the powerful Mujer Ángel, Desierto de Sonora, 1979 (Angel Woman, Sonoran Desert). Also included are images from her long stay in Juchitán, Oaxaca, capturing the strength and resilience of the Zapotec women in their matriarchal society, a project considered central to her genius. These early, gelatin silver prints, developed by Iturbide in the darkroom, showcase her masterful use of natural light and shadow, creating a raw and haunting quality that she believes is “more truthful” to her subjects.
Bridging documentary realism and poetic symbolism, themes of life and death, tradition and modernity, and the interplay of indigenous and Spanish heritages run throughout the exhibition, offering nuanced insights into a nation in constant transformation.
About Graciela Iturbide: Born in 1942 in Mexico City, Graciela Iturbide abandoned film studies in 1969 to train with her photography mentor Manuel Álvarez Bravo, becoming his assistant. Bravo, who died at 100 in 2002, was one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography. Iturbide went on to take photographs in many countries — including in Cuba, Germany, India, Madagascar, Hungary, France and the U.S. — but has always remained deeply rooted in Mexico’s cultural landscape. A late 1970s project documenting Mexico’s Seri and Juchitán communities in the Sonoran Desert yielded her seminal 1989 book “Juchitán de las Mujeres,” showcasing matriarchal Zapotec life.
Iturbide is also recognized for her series depicting Frida Kahlo’s bathroom, shot 20 years ago at the Casa Azul (Frida Kahlo Museum) in Coyoacán. Some of her photos of Kahlo’s prosthetic leg, corsets and other medical objects (needed after she suffered traumatic injuries in a 1925 bus-streetcar collision) were shown in the 2023 exhibit “Kahlo Without Borders.” Exhibitions at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art and the Hokkaido Museum of Photography in Japan cemented her global stature. Her commitment to honest, evocative storytelling has made her a pivotal figure in contemporary photography, earning her the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts.