Courtesy of Graciela Iturbide Graciela Iturbide snapped this 2006 self-portrait in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Graciela Iturbide stood silently — almost invisible — in a crowd of people staring at her photograph. The image, titled "Angel Woman, Sonora Desert, Mexico," is of a young Seri Indian seen from behind, wearing traditional clothing and descending a hill into a vast expanse. The photograph appears to be decades old, except that the girl is carrying a boom box — a blending of tradition with modernization.

Watching this small, quiet woman at the opening of The Goat's Dance, a 30-year retrospective of Iturbide's photographs at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, it's easy to understand how she gained trust as an outsider to capture portraits that show respect and honor without making her subjects seem exotic. The security her subjects must feel allows Iturbide to create visual poetry.

Iturbide's success, in part, stems from patience. Born in 1942 to a middle-class family in Mexico City, she came to photography in 1970, apprenticing with and later assisting famed photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. She began to travel through rural Mexico, spending weeks or longer in Oaxaca.

The exhibition's title is taken from Iturbide's 1992 study in La Mixteca, Oaxaca, of a centuries-old custom that involves the killing of goats. She spent a week observing the ritual, including the dancing of the goat, when a goat is chosen to be spared and crowned with a wreath of flowers.

"Our Lady of the Iguanas," perhaps her best-known photograph, taken in 1979 in Juchitán, Mexico, depicts a woman at a market wearing the iguanas she plans to sell on her head like a crown.

Iturbide explained that the woman had already put the iguanas down, but offered to pick them up again and pose. Iturbide took about a dozen shots, eventually capturing one in which all the iguanas raised their heads in a regal fashion.

Though Iturbide focuses primarily on Mexico, one of her projects involved photographing members of the White Fence and Maravilla gangs in East Los Angeles. The poses, from stern flashes of gang signs to playful embraces among couples, provide a glimpse into a world Iturbide hadn't known until she took the pictures.

At the exhibit's opening, Iturbide stood below a quotation printed from a recent interview on the wall near the "Angel Woman" photo. The words might have been emanating from her thoughts at that moment: "To go out with the camera, to observe, to photograph the most mythological aspects of people, to go into darkness, to develop, to select the most symbolic images I don't believe in anything, but I seek rituals of religion, the heroes of religion — the gods."

The Getty has mounted a smaller companion show, André Kertész Photographs: Seven Decades, a collection of 55 prints by one of the 20th century's most celebrated photographers.

Although Kertész's subject matter is different, he and Iturbide share a keen eye for composition. A favorite model for Kertész was Paris, the city in which he framed iconic images in new ways. "Broken Plate," taken in 1929, was created when the negative was damaged. The shattered image gives the viewer a new view of the beautiful Paris skyline.

Weston Neaf, curator for photography at the Getty, speaking about the pair of exhibitions, said it takes great skill to make the difficult craft of photography look so easy.

Finding the poetry and beauty in the everyday remains a passion for Iturbide, as it was for Kertész. The Getty has created a memorable experience by linking them.