Visual Clarity and Emotional Ambiguity: Graciela Iturbide’s Mercado de Sonora, 1987
Graciela Iturbide, Mercado de Sonora, Ciudad de México (Sonora Market, Mexico City), 1987.
Food, and the way food is procured, is a central part of the human experience, especially in cities. I remember regularly going to the farmer’s market with my mom and sisters. We would play in the fountain, pick out the vegetables for dinner, listen to whichever band was playing that morning, and share honey sticks as we were all just sun-burnt enough to remind us that we’re very pale but not enough to be painful. This farmer’s market was not a new concept - many types of markets have been crucial to city life for centuries. They are ubiquitous and a historic hallmark of cities. Graciela Iturbide’s Mercado de Sonora (Sonora Market), 1987 offers visual clarity of the physical place of the market as well as the emotional ambiguity of the environment, particularly through the anonymous person, their newspaper, and the presence of the chickens in the frame.
Born in Mexico City in 1942, Iturbide photographed everyday life not only in Mexico City but also of the indiginous people of Mexico. Through assisting Manuel Álvarez Bravo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she was introduced to photography, particularly photographing cities. In 1978 as part of a grant she received from the Ethnographic Archive of the National Indigenous Institute of Mexico, she lived with and photographed the Seri peoples (Ostrander). In a different commission by painter Francisco Toledo, she photographed the town of Juchitán, part of the Zapotec culture (Iturbide). Here she created photographs such as Nuestra Señora de las Iguana, Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1979 and Curación, Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1988. Through the ‘A Day in the Life of America’ project in 1986, Iturbide “chose to document the Chicano community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles [and] was able to live with and shadow a group of women of the community for one and a half days closely detailing their activities.” (AMA). In these photographs, it is apparent that Iturbide meaningfully engages with her subjects before photographing. They are represented in her frame with such poise, elegance, and clarity. Her photograph of this moment in the Sonora Market is no different.
In this photograph, an anonymous person is buried in a newspaper. Their hat poking out from behind, this individual looks to be well kept. Potentially, they are a salesperson out front of the chicken stand. One might initially assume that they are the butcher but their outfit contradicts that assumption. The clean sleeves framing the newspaper, the fading pleats on the front of their pants, as well as the small decoration on their hat all provide context that this person may not be the butcher afterall. One can see where the pleats on their pants have faded (maybe throughout the day’s work) but also where they are carefully hemmed and tailored to the proper length. The cuffs on each sleeve are clean of any tears or signs of wear. The singular undone button might indicate that their jacket is buttoned and unbuttoned, depending on the customer or the weather. While the reader’s expression is obscured by the newspaper, their hunched forward movement and intentional grip on the newspaper all point to the investment of the reader and fosters a sense of apprehension in the viewer. This cleanliness and investment in their reading material, offers a potential framework of who this anonymous person might be.
In this photograph, an anonymous person is buried in a newspaper with the bold text on the back, ‘DESVALIJABAN A FERROCARRILES’, or ‘THEY ROBBED RAILWAYS’. The photograph most visible to the viewer depicts a person scaling a structure, looking towards their task while high up in the sky. This announcement seems to shout it’s own questions to the viewer pertaining to the time, place, and location of the crime. Maybe it is a feature piece about the history of train robberies, run for the weekend edition. Alternatively, it might be an advertisement designed to shunt viewers towards an alternative method of transportation provided by the advertiser. I find myself as invested in the speculation as the subject is engrossed in the same publication.
In this photograph, an anonymous person is buried in a newspaper with the bold text on the back, ‘DESVALIJABAN A FERROCARRILES’, or ‘THEY ROBBED RAILWAYS’ while standing amidst piles of chickens. Dead, alive, or in line for butchering as the chickens in the foreframe seem to be in this photograph, they are a staple of many markets over time. Tied up and neatly set out on the ground, these seven chickens look to be resigned but still observant of the space around them. Further into the frame, there are crates more of chickens - both off to the left of the frame as well as behind the person reading the newspaper. This abundance of product offers two different scenarios, one being that the market is bustling and the reader is taking a break from their work from hawking fresh meat. The second being that the market is supposed to be busy but is not that day at this stall. The reader is now passing the time between infrequent customers. Whichever the scenario, this moment seems to be of outside calm while the reader seems to be in a different place, transported by their newspaper.
While markets are in every city, they are inherently unique. I find myself wondering if this was anyone’s favorite chicken stand? What role does the anonymous reader have within the context of this market? Alternatively, was this stand avoided and then left a surplus of chickens? Is the article that the anonymous person is reading connected somehow or is it simply a part of daily life? Allowing the viewer to create all of these questions, Iturbide offers a visually clear view of the marketplace, similar to the women she photographs. Leaving enough information to construct potential context but leaving room for the viewer to explore and be curious. She approaches the ambiguity of markets with the same clarity as she approaches photographing women and places, only this time the clarity is applied to a particular moment that is a person reading a newspaper in a chicken stand.
This essay was written in November 2021 for Lucy Sante’s Cities and Photography course at Bard College.
Sources
AMA, OAS. “Graciela Iturbide B.1942 Mexico.” GRACIELA ITURBIDE - Arts of the Americas, http://www.oas.org/artsoftheamericas/graciela-iturbide.
Iturbide, Graciela, and Judith Keller. Juchitán. Getty, 2008.
Ostrander, Dana. “Graciela Iturbide: Moma.” The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art, 2021, https://www.moma.org/artists/2844#works.