“My intention, certainly, is to create something which is aesthetic,” the photographer Graciela Iturbide, born in 1942, has said, “but many things are implicit in the work that I do. For me photography is writing, it is history.” In visceral black-and-white photographs, Iturbide captures the life of her native Mexico—its buoyant cultural celebrations, faces, places, and symbols. In the largest U.S. retrospective in 20 years, 140 photographs from Iturbide’s archives, organized around nine themes, are on display. —E.C.

Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Ave NW, Washington, DC 20005, United States
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