SANTA MONICA, CA.- ROSEGALLERY shared that Graciela Iturbide has been honored with the 2026 Leica Hall of Fame Award.

“Over the course of more than five decades, the Mexican photographer’s life’s work has established her as one of Latin America’s most important and internationally renowned contemporary voices. Since the early 1970s, the photographer, born in 1942, has explored village structures and marginalised indigenous communities beyond her own metropolitan world in Mexico City, focusing in particular on the significance of matriarchal social structures. Her photographs form part of a humanist photographic tradition, combining documentary elements with a distinctive personal and subjective visual language. Iturbide has continuously placed tensions between culture and nature, tradition and modernity, and memory and the present at the heart of her photographic series. Her work is far removed from any kind of trivialisation of folklore and does not resort to colourful clichés or tourist-oriented exoticism. Instead, she explores universal themes, such as life and death, rituals and everyday experiences. Spiritual rituals and mundane everyday moments are not mutually exclusive, but form part of a unique, magical reality that directs our gaze beyond the visible.”

“Iturbide’s work is deeply rooted in Latin American culture. What makes her images so unique is the interplay between documentary and spiritual representation, which is often enigmatic. The chosen Leica Picture of the Year, with its complexity and visual composition, is also a prime example of the photographer’s distinctive visual language. At the centre of the photograph “Na’ Lupe Pan” is a woman portrayed against a wall covered in bold, abstract patterns. Taken in 1986, the photograph forms part of an important series developed over a long period, exploring matriarchal structures and the everyday lives of strong indigenous women in the town of Juchitán in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. This striking black-and-white image’s power comes from the contrast between the serene portrait of the woman in a dignified pose and the dynamic background of the wall against the hustle and bustle of everyday life.”