GRACIELA ITURBIDE

Graciela Iturbide, Carnival, Tlaxcala, Mexico, 1974.

Afterimage by Pauline Koffi Vandet:

I saw this many years ago, and it still gives me goosebumps. After high school, I took a year-long sabbatical and was in London, where my interest in art—especially photography and new media—began. I have this image to thank for that. I was at Tate and came across a retrospective exhibition of the artist Graciela Iturbide. As I entered one of the rooms filled with many photographs, this one stood out. I can’t quite say what it was, but it was visually captivating in a way that immediately caught my attention. I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that captured me.

Later, I wrote a thesis using Roland Barthes’ idea of the punctum in an image, exploring how this was my first encounter with such a punctum. It became an image that is very dear to me; I’m still captivated by it many years later, and it continues to evoke strong emotions for me. I think this is because it’s so uncanny: the mask is human-like, yet not entirely. It appears to be a person in a carnival suit. To me, it is a genderless or perhaps genderfluid being, and from my perspective it could be either living or non-living. There’s something deeply alluring about it. The plain background, which doesn’t compete with the figure, helps focus attention on the masked being.

This photograph is an acknowledgment of the deeply personal and non-universal nature of Barthes’ punctum to me. While many walked past it, it absorbed me and has never let me go.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite artists and writers to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue in 2010.