On the occasion of the release of the book Des oiseaux by Graciela Iturbide, we offer a first edition including the book and a signed and numbered silver photograph: Land of the Seminole Indians, Florida, USA, 1998.
Graciela Iturbide, a leading figure in Latin American photography, creates images that oscillate between documentary approach and lyricism. Off-centre framing, graphic effects and the power of shadows create a poetic universe where a feeling of strangeness is mixed with that of a raw reality. The powerful balance of his compositions reveals skies saturated with birds, comical and unexpected situations where chickens wait quietly on market stalls, where pigeons argue with monkeys, and where elsewhere there are moving swarms that resemble real living organisms with supple and fluid movements.
For Iturbide, living birds represent freedom. But death is never far away and neither is a certain surrealist spirit. From India to Mexico, from seafronts to urban terraces, seagulls, eagles, pigeons, herons and crows invade human space or slip in unexpectedly and solitarily. Graciela Iturbide's birds arouse both attraction and repulsion: their fragility but also their power...
