Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts 2025, will photograph the volcanic lands of the Canary Islands in a new artistic project, she announced this Monday in Oviedo within the framework of the events prior to the award ceremony next Friday.
The artist, who on Monday participated in the opening of the exhibition Graciela Iturbide: Spain and Mexico and in a meeting with the public at the old arms factory in Oviedo, converted into a cultural center, said that she is surprised by the beauty of the volcanic stone and lava and that she will soon travel to the Canary Islands to photograph them.
Iturbide, who has been granted the award for a work with a great emotional and cultural load that combines the documentary with the poetic, has stated that she felt fascinated by volcanoes on a recent trip to the Canary Islands, and that she will soon return to the islands to develop a photographic project on that theme.
The photographer explained that she began her career "developing the negatives" of the Italian Tina Modotti and was a disciple of the Mexican Manuel Álvarez Bravo, from whom she learned "a great deal," especially to "photograph without haste" and to develop a culture of the image.
She recalled that Álvarez Bravo told her that to be a good photographer, she had to immerse herself in the graphic arts, especially painting, and also see many photos and study and research the subjects she was going to address.
In the meeting with the public, after the opening of the exhibition, he explained that the camera has allowed him to "learn a lot about the cultures" of the peoples he has portrayed and that despite his long career he is still "surprised."
"I photograph what surprises me and what I like," he has said, "from people and towns to stones."
Iturbide has recounted how she has felt documenting aboriginal cultures in her country, which were practically unknown in Mexico and the rest of the world, and which have nothing to do with the way of life in large cities.
The exhibition organized by the Princess of Asturias Foundation in homage to the award winner brings together 173 photographs organized in series that include stories of various characters and reflect rituals from Spain and Mexico.
The exhibition also features installations of a cornfield, a symbol of the shared culture between Asturias and Mexico, and the audiovisual work Rara avis, which evokes the symbolic universe of birds, a recurring theme in Iturbide's work.
