[10] She was inspired by the photography of Josef Koudelka, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastião Salgado, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

With focus on identity, sexuality, festivals, rituals, daily life, death, and roles of women, Iturbide's photographs share visual stories of cultures in constant transitional periods.

"[13] Some of Iturbide's earliest works involved the documenting of angelitos, young or infant children that had died, and their burial.

Despite this, art critic Oscar C. Nates notes that death in Iturbide's photographs is not gloomy, but poetic.

[16] "Mujer Ángel" was used by the politically charged metal group Rage Against the Machine for their single "Vietnow" in 1997.

[17] In 1979, Iturbide was asked by painter Francisco Toledo to photograph the Juchitán people who form part of the Zapotec culture native to Oaxaca, Mexico.

[8]: 4  "Nuestra Señora de Las Iguanas" is also part of the 2019 series exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: Graciela Iturbide's Mexico.

[17] Comparisons have been made between Iturbide's "Nuestra Señora de las Iguanas" and La Virgen de Guadalupe, showing an indigenous woman from Juchitan as a rendition of La Virgen of Guadalupe, the image serves as a reminder of the hardships and injustices that indigenous communities in Mexico have suffered.

[21] However, her work in Juchitán was not only about women, as she also photographed "Magnolia", a photo of a nonbinary person wearing a dress and looking at themselves in a mirror.

With their trust, Iturbide was invited to film many of their private celebrations and she became exposed to the Zapotec people through the eyes of the indigenous women.

Iturbide has also photographed Mexican-Americans in the White Fence (street gang) barrio of Eastside Los Angeles as part of the documentary book A Day in the Life of America (1987).

One of the major concerns in her work has been "to explore and articulate the ways in which a vocable such as 'Mexico' is meaningful only when understood as an intricate combination of histories and practices.

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.