Graciela Iturbide review – death-soaked genius from a Mexican master

Photographers Gallery, London
Whether recording barren landscapes, foreboding clouds of birds or single-frame noir dramas, the 82-year-old artist’s work is bleak, haunted and utterly compelling

Graciela Iturbide’s photographs rasp, screech and thrum from the unutterable corners of the soul. The primordial scream of a baby as he lies on the backseat of a car, waiting for the milk his mother prepares, is captured in one image. But his mother is deaf – one of several deaf women with ties to the Mexican American White Fence gang in LA, whom Iturbide met and photographed in 1986.

Iturbide is a master of metaphor and allegory. The first image encountered in Shadowlines – a rare UK institutional showcase of the 82-year-old Mexican artist – is of a blindfolded woman, sitting on a chair in a living room somewhere in the matriarchal community of the Juchitán in Mexico. Unusual for a photographer, Iturbide is intrigued by sensations that lie beyond sight; she channels visions of worlds within. Those places are often dark and mystifying – but Iturbide is as fearless as they come.

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