Graciela Iturbide
[Photographer, b. 1942, Mexico City, lives in Coyoacán, Mexico.]

 In a way my work is documentary. But I am also a photographer who has a distinct style. My photographs are a companion to the reality of the situation. 
 Wherever we go we want to find the theme we carry inside ourselves. 
 When I’m taking pictures I even forget that I have a camera. When I shoot I forget about everything. Light comes, death comes, people go in and out in costume—and it’s like a play. 
 What the eye sees is a synthesis of who you are and all you have learned. This is what I would call the language of photography. 
 I do not understand what makes me take a picture. Cartier-Bresson talks about the “decisive moment,” the necessity to function with “lynx eyes and silk gloves.” Perhaps what happens when you press the shutter is an intuitive act infused with all you have learned. 
 The camera is just a pretext for knowing the world. 
 I never use a telephoto lens. I need to be close to people. I need their complicity; I need them to be aware that I am there taking their picture. I hate paparazzi. 
 The camera is an excuse to share the life of the people, the rhythm and simplicity of festivities, to discover my country. While using my camera I am, above all, an actress participating in the scene taking place at the moment, and the other actors know what role I play. I never think of my images as a project, I simply live the situations and photograph them; it is afterwards that I discover the images.