|
Fig. 13. Graciela Iturbide, b. 1942 |
In spite of America's bullish way with the
world, people persist. They refuse to be diminished to grist for the economic mill.
Graciela Iturbide's marvelous photograph, Angel/Woman (1979; fig. 13), shows a Mexican
woman in the Sonoran Desert fabricating her existence from a cultural past, a bleak
landscape, and the consumerist world of American capitalism represented by the ghetto
blaster she totes through a difficult passage.[5] Identity
is not something one inherits intact and is destined to carry through life as a fixed
burden. Character is the product of history, a hybrid of cultures, and the choices that
individual people make about the lives they wish to lead. Identity is negotiated between
the present and the past. This woman, a Seri Indian whose face is hidden from view, walks
in her traditional dress as if out of the magical space of a novel by Gabriel Garcia
Marquez. She is an anomaly, but also a survivor, and more: she is a harbinger of a larger,
future American identity. This mysterious Angel and Woman bears a message of what may come
to pass as the border culture between Mexico and the United States broadens across North
and Central America in a historical rhythm of change that we can now only begin to intuit. ...[more images] |
| 5. On Iturbide and her photographs, see Images of the Spirit: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide (New York: Aperture, 1996). |
