The eldest of 13 children born in 1942 in Mexico City to a traditional Mexican family, Graciela Iturbide got her first camera at age 11, inspired by the photographs her father had taken. Iturbide had not begun as a still photographer.  She had originally enrolled in film school at the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at the Universidad Nacional Autónama de México but was drawn to still photography when she met Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who was teaching there.  He became her mentor and she assisted him on a number of photographic shoots throughout Mexico. Iturbide was viewed as the natural successor to Manuel Alvarez Bravo. It was Bravo who told her, “There is always time for the pictures you want.” His work influenced her until his death at age 100 in 2002.