Graciela Iturbide Heliotropo 37

From February 12 to May 29, 2022, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presents Heliotropo 37, the first large exhibition devoted to Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide in France, spanning works dating from the 1970s to the present day. For the occasion, she opens the doors of her studio at 37 Calle Heliotropo in Mexico, an architectural masterpiece by Mauricio Rocha, who has also been entrusted with the exhibition scenography. A veritable exhibition-portrait, Heliotropo 37 brings together over 200 images, from her most iconic photographs to her more recent production, as well as a color series created especially for the exhibition.

Winner of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund in 1987, then the Hasselblad Award in 2008—photography’s highest distinction—Graciela Iturbide is a major figure of Latin American photography. For over fifty years, she has created images that oscillate between a documentary approach and a poetic gaze: “I have looked for the surprise in the ordinary, an ordinary that I could find anywhere in the world.” If today she is famous for her portraits of Seri Indians in the Sonora Desert and Juchitán women, as well as for her photographic work around Mexico’s ancestral communities and traditions, Graciela Iturbide also brings a quasi spiritual attention to landscapes and objects. This unique exhibition presents the two sides of Graciela Iturbide, thereby providing us with a fresh perspective on her work.