Graciela Iturbide has engaged with her homeland as a subject for the past fifty years in images of great variety and depth. The intensely personal, lyrical photographs collected and interpreted in this book show that, for her, photography is a way of life—as well as a way of seeing and understanding Mexico, with all its beauties, rituals, challenges, and contradictions. The Mexico portrayed here is a country in constant transition, defined by tensions between urban and rural life, and indigenous and modern life. Iturbide’s deep connection with her subjects—among them political protests, celebrations and rituals, desert landscapes, cities, places of burial—produces indelible images that encompass dreams, symbols, reality, and daily life.

This volume presents more than a hundred beautifully reproduced photographs, accompanied by illuminating essays inviting readers to share in Graciela Iturbide’s personal artistic journey through the country she knows so intimately.