Graciela Iturbide
The Hasselblad award was presented for the 28th time on Saturday 25 October 2008. The award winner, Graciela Iturbide, Mexico City, received the award from H.R.H. Prince Carl Philip at a ceremony at the Göteborg City Theatre. The award sum was SEK 500,000. In conjunction with the ceremony an exhibit of the award winner’s work, Graciela Iturbide – 2008 Hasselblad award winner, opened at the Hasselblad Center at the Göteborg Museum of Art.

The Foundation’s citation:

Graciela Iturbide is considered one of the most important and influential Latin American photographers of the past four decades.  Her photography is of the highest visual strength and beauty.  Graciela Iturbide has developed a photographic style based on her strong interest in culture, ritual, and everyday life in her native Mexico and other countries.  Iturbide has extended the concept of documentary photography, to explore the relationships between man and nature, the individual and the cultural, the real and the psychological.  She continues to inspire a younger generation of photographers in Latin America and beyond. 

This year’s prize committee, which submitted its proposal to the Foundation’s Board of Directors, comprised:

• Frits Gierstberg, (Chair) Head of Exhibitions, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands,
• David Chandler, Director, Photoworks, Brighton, England,
• Monika Faber, Chief Curator, Albertina Collection of Photographs, Austria,
• Michiko Kasahara, Chief Curator, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan,
• Patricia Mendoza, Director, Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca, Mexico.