Visual Witness: A Critical Rereading of Graciela Iturbide’s Photography

Abstract

Abstract: This article underlines the importance of Latin American photography at a time when the visual turn of Hispanism is increasingly evident. At the time of writing, Graciela Iturbide is one of the foremost living photographers in Latin America. This article reengages with Iturbide’s work using notions of photography as witness and drawing on photography scholar Ariella Azoulay’s structure of the civil contract of photography—in addition to concepts from other visual experts—to identify and underline the several fundamental elements to which Iturbide’s photography testifies. To achieve this result, this article studies her first solo visual narrative, Los que viven en la arena.