Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide wins Spain's Princess of Asturias Prize for the Arts

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MADRID (AP) — Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide was awarded Spain's 2025 Princess of Asturias Prize for the Arts for her images that for decades have captured "the social reality not only of Mexico, but also of many places,” prize organizers said Friday.

Iturbide became famous internationally for her sparse, cinematic and mostly black-and-white photographs of Indigenous societies in Mexico, with a particular focus on the role of women in them.

In “Our Lady of the Iguanas,” one of Iturbide's best-known images published in 1979, an Indigenous Zapotec woman in southern Mexico carries live iguanas on her head that form the shape of a crown.

The award’s jury said that Iturbide’s photographs have “a documentary facet” that show “a hypnotic world that seems to lie on the threshold between reality at its harshest and the grace of spontaneous magic.”

Iturbide's work has been displayed in the world's leading art institutions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many more. Her work has been published in numerous books.

The photographer, born in Mexico City in 1942, traveled throughout Latin America during her career, but also to India, Madagascar, Hungary, Germany, France the United States and elsewhere.

The 50,000-euro ($57,000) Princess of Asturias Award is one of several annual prizes covering areas, including arts, literature, science and sports.

The awards ceremony, presided over by Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, and accompanied by Princess Leonor, takes place each fall in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo.