The photograph Señor de los Pájaros was taken after a recurring dream of a man surrounded by birds. She [Iturbide] then encountered that very man in Las Islas Marías, capturing her dreams on film. Neither the dream nor photograph could exist without each other.

Source: Photographic: the Life of Graciela Iturbide by Isabel Quintero & Zeke Peña, Getty Publications, 2018; p.90.

EDITOR'S NOTES

• "Neither dream nor photo could exist without each other": exaggerated. The recurring dream existed before the photo did, and the photo could have been taken by a quite dreamless photographer. But they do mean a lot more in combination! Not just that dreams can be predictive--every culture in the world knew that, until the Enlightenment's extremists decided to eject anything they couldn't explain--but that dreams can reveal your life-path, prompt you to your career or calling. As this one seems to have done for Iturbide.
• Las Marias Is: islands 100 km off San Blas, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta, in Nayarit State at the mouth of the Gulf of California. The few inhabitants lived around a prison on the main island--the jailed, their jailors, and support staff. The hard life reflected in El Señor's face is no trick of the light.

FOLLOW-UP

In an interview, Graciela herself clarifies the romanticized version above.

"One day... I dreamed a sentence over and over: "In my country I shall plant birds." And I saw a man with many birds flying around him. In my dreams the sentence and the image appeared together.

"I don't know what meaning the phrase had, and visually, it was simply a man with many birds. By chance, later on, I found him. I mean, it's not too difficult to run into a man surrounded by birds. I went to an island in Baja California, near the Marías Islands, populated only by birds, and a man was there, the caretaker of the island. One of my well known photos is of him looking at the birds. I relate it to the dream.

"What I still haven't figured out is whether the sentence has to do with me as a photographer or simply as a person. It was when I wanted to print the photo that I remembered the dream, and it made an impression. Now I don't know if I've exaggerated the recognition of the image, or if the dream influenced me to see a certain reality. It could be that the image was captured by my dream."

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