Lesson 2 assignment

[RUBEN ADAD]

One of the artists I admire most is Graciela Iturbide. She was born in 1942 in Mexico City. In 1969 she enrolled at the age of 27 at the film school Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónama de México to become a film director. However she was soon drawn to the art of still photography as practiced by the Mexican modernist master Manuel Alvarez Bravo who was teaching at the University. From 1970-71 she worked as Bravo’s assistant accompanying him on his various photographic journeys throughout Mexico.

Between 1980 and 2000, Iturbide was invited to work in Cuba, East Germany, India, Madagascar, Hungary, Paris and the US, producing a number of important bodies of work. She has enjoyed solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou (1982), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1990), Philadelphia Museum of Art (1997), Paul Getty Museum (2007), and more. She continues to live and work in Mexico City.

Of her works the most appreciated by me are the photographs of Mexico’s indigenous population. All the photos I know from her are black and white which seems to me more dramatic and deep than color photography. It also forces us to look at objects from another perspective.

I hope to learn the basic techniques to make black and white photos of good quality. The topics that most interest me are landscapes (urban and natural) and people.

[Duncan Rawlinson]

Thanks for submitting your second assignment.

Going forward please wait until your current assignment has been critiqued before you move onto the next assignment.

For anyone looking at this in the future here is the wikipedia page for her:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graciela_Iturbide

Here are a couple examples of Graciela Iturbide remarkable photographs:
[attachment=1:sgrny5p2]La frontera, Tijuana, México (The Border, Tijuana, Mexico) 28509301.jpg[/attachment:sgrny5p2]
La frontera, Tijuana, México (The Border, Tijuana, Mexico)
via: http://getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=285093&handle=li

[attachment=0:sgrny5p2]Nuestra Senora de las Iguanas, Juchitán, Oaxaca Our Lady of the Iguanas, Juchitán, Oaxaca 28477801_zm.jpg[/attachment:sgrny5p2]
Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas, Juchitán, Oaxaca Our Lady of the Iguanas, Juchitán, Oaxaca
via: http://getty.edu/art/exhibitions/iturbide/28477801_zm.html

She certainly has some remarkable images.

I want you to be careful about falling into the trap of thinking that black and white photographs are somehow inherently more dramatic than color photographs. This is a common misconception. What makes a dramatic photograph is dramatic subject matter!

You will learn more about black and white photography as the course progresses.

I hope that you can learn from Graciela Iturbide’s work that if you put yourself in interesting situations you can often get interesting photographs! You just have to be ready and have some technical know how. That just takes practice!!! So keep shooting!!!

Keep in mind if you ever have questions you can always ask them here or send them to office@photographyicon.com

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