– JAN

Mindepartementet, Art and Photography. Stockholm

Available to be seen for the first time is a dialogue between the photographs of Graciela Iturbide from Mexico and the Swede, Christer Strömholm. Their friendship arose in the 1980s out of their conversations and exchange of views about photography, which is now crystallized in this exhibition organized by Fundación MAPFRE in collaboration with the Mindepartementet, Art and Photography.

The show is structured around fifty-one examples of Iturbide’s work taken from the collection owned by Fundación MAPFRE. Both photographers share work in which the documentary and conceptual traditions go hand-in-hand, facilitating a fluent conversation between them. Both are recipients of the Hasselblad Award, presented annually by the Swedish Academy of the same name and which currently represents the highest accolade a photographer can achieve.

In 2009 Fundación MAPFRE acquired work by Graciela Iturbide for the first time, currently one of the most important collections of the artist in existence, with over 180 pieces.  That same year we put on the most extensive retrospective of the artist that had ever been held up to that point in Spain, placing particular emphasis on her later work which was unknown in Europe until then.

Graciela Iturbide (Mexico City, 1942) is one of the most outstanding Mexican photographers on the contemporary international stage. For over more than four decades she has built up an intense and profoundly singular body of work, essential for understanding how photography in Mexico and the rest of Latin America has evolved. In it she brings together nature and the human condition, reality and dreams, life and death. Her work continues to have a major influence on subsequent generations.