Between 1979 and 1988, the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide (b. 1942) made a series of visits to Juchitán, Mexico, where, in her words, she photographed the way of life there "in complicity with the people." Located in the state of Oaxaca, Juchitán is an ancient, communal, matriarchal society. It is also an open, fiercely independent, fiesta-loving city. Since the early twentieth century, the women of Juchitán--their dress and manner--have been national symbols, and Iturbide's photographs capture them in public and in private as they conduct their lives in this ancient city in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Women of Juchitán is published to accompany the exhibition The Goat's Dance: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide , which opens at the J. Paul Getty Museum on December 18, 2007.