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Iturbide’s “Jano,
Ocumichu,
Michoacan”
(above,
left)
refers
to Jano or
Janus, the
Roman god.
The two
heads
looking to
the past and
to the
future is
how January
got its
name. Janus
links past
and future,
young and
old,
planting
time and
harvest
time, birth
and death,
savagery and
civilization.
This links
the Romans
to a very
early era
when even
they were
close to the
earth.
Graciela Iturbide:
The Spirits of the
Earth ~ Los Espíritus
de la Tierra
Galleries A & B:
Thursday,
September 18 to
Saturday,
November 8, 2008
Opening
Reception: Thursday,
September 18,
6:00 p.m. to
8:00 p.m.
Sin titulo,
Botanical Gardens,
Oaxaca
Image Courtesy of
Graphicstudio/USF
Graciela Iturbide,
Nuestra Señora de
las Iguanas
Image Courtesy of
Graphicstudio/USF
ESSAY BY JOANNE
MILANI,
MUSEUM
DIRECTOR
Through her
photography,
Graciela Iturbide
welcomes you into an
elemental place you
have never before
entered. She shows
you an early Garden
of Eden where Adam
and Eve have not yet
named the beasts,
and where good and
evil have not yet
begun to fight.
Graciela Iturbide.
Photo by Pedro Meyer
From biblical times and
even from early Roman
times, people in the
West believed that by
giving names to beasts
and birds, they owned
those creatures. By
conferring names and
claiming ownership,
humans set themselves
above and apart from the
natural world.
Iturbide’s world,
however, is not a
Western world. Mexico is a land of fertile mixtures, a proud
“mezcla” of races
and cultures from
Europe, Africa and Asia,
as well as the
indigenous cultures of
the
New World.
The West’s contributions
add up to only a few
cupfuls in the cauldron
of rich Mexican stew.
Iturbide herself is of
Spanish descent. Born
into relative privilege
in
Mexico City
in 1942, she discovered
her gift for photography
as an adult. Luckily,
she gained as a mentor
the great Mexican
photographer Manuel
Alvarez Bravo.
Graciela Iturbide,
Jano, Ocumichu,
Michoacan
Image Courtesy of
Graphicstudio/USF
Graciela Iturbide,
Mujer Angel,
Image Courtesy of
Graphicstudio/USF
In such
a world, opposites like
“male and female,” “past
and present,” “life and
death” lose their power.
We are used to thinking
of stories in linear
form with beginnings,
middles and ends. But in
Juchitan, there is no
need for beginnings and
endings because their
stories are circular.
Forget beginnings and
endings. Nothing dies
because it is reborn.
Male becomes female.
Humans
resurface as
beasts. The snake
swallows its tail. The
spirits in the earth are
always regenerating and
fading back into the
soil. The dead walk
among the living.
In her quest to
find the real
Mexican
identity, she
was also lucky
enough to
discover
Juchitan in
1980. This remote
Mexican city has
a population of
100,000
indigenous Zapotecs. Thanks
to their
isolation on the
Isthmus of
Tehauntepec, the
Zapotecs had
little contact
with Western
(European or
Spanish) ways.
The Zapotecs
believe they are
descended from
heaven in the
shape of birds.
They call
themselves the
“people of the
clouds.”
“Juchitan
women run the
economy,”
Iturbide once
observed. “Even
physically,
Juchitan men are
often smaller
and skinnier
than their
women.”
In “Magnolia,”
(not shown)
a man
dressed as a
woman holds a
mirror against
his/her face,
blurring the
gender divide
and underscoring
the matriarchal
structure of Zapotec society.
In “Nuestra
Senora de las
Iguanas,”
(right) live
lizards emerge
from a woman’s
head, erasing
the beast/human
divide. In
“The Bird Man, Nayarit, Mexico,”
(not shown)
the
flurry of birds
indicates a
crowd of souls
arriving or
departing
heaven. The
ghostly “Mujer/Angel”
(above, right) skitters across
an endless
desert carrying
a boom-box from
the present into
the past.
As William
Faulkner once
said, “The past
isn’t dead. It
isn’t even
past.”
Joanne Milani,
Executive
Director,
Florida
Museum of Photographic
Arts
GOLD
SHOW SPONSOR
MEDIA SPONSOR
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