By Chuck Myers
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide documents a world steeped in ritual and mystery.

Her eloquent photographs mix the stark with the sublime, and effectively capture the intricate deep-rooted traditions of Mexican culture. Her expressive subjects share a strong communal bond that is intimately linked to the land they live and work on. Yet it is their individuality and character that most often shine through in her work.

Iturbide's unique photographic explorations of native cultures are showcased in an engaging exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. "Image of the Spirit: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide" contains almost 100 images produced by Iturbide over the past three decades.

Iturbide's ethnographic photo projects have made her one of Mexico's premier photographers and earned her a number of prestigious photographic honors over the years, including the W. Eugene Smith award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

The photographer, who celebrated her 58th birthday in May, studied filmmaking at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematograficos in the late 1960s. She developed an interest in photography while working as an assistant for famed Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo in 1970 and 1971.

While some of the Iturbide works on view were shot in South America and Los Angeles, most were taken in Mexico. Her images detail the social practices and customs of many different communities, with a particular emphasis on the indigenous Zapotec Indians in Mexico's southern Oaxaca province.

Religious rituals and a reverence for the dead underpin many of the works in the show. The positioning of a partially clothed young girl, arrangements of mourning flowers, candles and small alter shape a subtle large cross in one piece. In another, the face of a demur young girl is hidden behind a skeletal mask on the day of her "First Communion" (1984).

The toils of village life and bounties of nature also play a pre-eminent role in the images.

Five women depicted from the waist down pluck dead chickens in one print among a thematic group of poultry-related works. A few feet away, hundreds of neatly laid out dead fish form a seemingly enormous school that sweeps across the image frame.

While Iturbide's photographs exhibit a candid quality similar to that of work by famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, her pictures also have a surreal feel at times. In "Death Bride" (1990), a women dressed in a bridal gown poses for the viewer with a skeletal mask over her face. In another view, a blindfolded woman sits impassively under the watchful gaze of a toddler. Iturbide's signature work, "Our Lady of the Iguanas" (1979), shows a Zapoteca woman vendor wearing a headdress comprised of eight live iguanas. To prevent the iguanas from snapping at her or customers, the woman had sewn their mouths shut.

It is difficult to remain complacent before Iturbide's photographs. Her images are hauntingly evocative, and invoke emotional responses ranging from arresting to remarkably intimate.

In perhaps the most disconcerting, yet captivating photographs in the show, Iturbide chronicled the different phases of a goat slaughter in Oaxaca. Her graphic images detail the difficult manual labor involved in the process. But they also possess a palpable sense of ritual and purpose, where death, in this instance, serves to sustain life in the greater community.

"Images of the Spirit: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide" remains on view at the NMWA through Sept. 24. The show later travels to The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y. (Nov. 19 Jan. 7, 2001); the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, N.M. (Feb. 9 April 22, 2001) and the Austin Museum of Art, Austin, Texas (May 11 July 15, 2001).

The National Museum for Women in the Arts is at 1250 New York Ave., N.W. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is by a suggested $3 donation for adults and $2 for students. For more information, call 202-783-5000, or check the museum's Web site at www.nmwa.org.

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