Self-portrait with the Seri Indians, Sonora Desert

Original Language TitleAutorretrato con los indios seris, desierto de Sonora

Artist Graciela Iturbide (Mexican, born 1942)

Date1979

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 14 1/16 × 14 3/16 inches (35.71 × 36.04 cm)
Sheet: 19 3/4 × 15 13/16 inches (50.17 × 40.21 cm)

Credit LineGift of the Hall Family Foundation

Object number2017.68.85

SignedSigned on sheet recto, lower right, in black pen: "Graciela Iturbide"

Inscribednone

MarkingsOn sheet verso, lower right, in pencil: "6"

On View

Not on view

Collections

Photography

Terms

DescriptionImage of a woman whose long wavy hair is parted down the center. She wears a collared shirt which is buttoned up to her neck. Her face is painted with tiny dots which extend across the brim of her nose to the edges of her face. She looks down at the viewer.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

In 1979, Graciela Iturbide spent two months living among the Seri Indians, a once-nomadic Indigenous group living in the Sonoran Desert of northwest Mexico, near the United States-Mexico border. Commissioned by the Mexican government, Iturbide used her camera to document the group’s changing lives as they adapted to modern culture.

At the request of Seri women, Iturbide wore traditional face painting for this self-portrait, a sign of her acceptance into the community. She appears to confront the camera in an act of self-interrogation, scrutinizing her place both within and outside the Seri culture.

Provenance

Purchased from Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ by The Hall Family Foundation, Kansas City, MO, 2017;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2017.

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