Graciela Iturbide was born in Mexico City in 1942. She studied at the University Center for Cinematographic Studies of the Autonomous University of Mexico. Since then, she has photographed what surprises her, using the camera as a pretext to discover the world. From 1971 to date, her work has been exhibited in more than ninety solo shows and numerous group exhibitions in museums, galleries, and institutions specializing in modern and contemporary photography in America, Europe, and Asia.
Among the awards, scholarships, and work commissions with which her work has been recognized are the W. Eugene Smith Prize, the Grand Prize of the Month of Photography in Paris, the Grand Prize of Hokkaido, Japan, and the Prize of the City from Arles, France. In 2008, her work was honored with the highest recognition in the world of photography, the Hasselblad Foundation Award. In 2014, the National Council for Culture and the Arts paid tribute to her work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and that year she was awarded the Infinity Prize by the International Center of Photography in recognition of her career. Recently, the National Museum of Women in the Arts recognized her with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Arts 2020 and the Sony World Photography Organization granted her the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award 2021.