Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti

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55 b/w photographs Ten years of research and the discovery of long-forgotten letters and photos enabled Patricia Albers to bring new recognition to this talented, intelligent, and independent photographer whose life embodied the cultural and political values of many artists of the post-World War I generation.

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Tina Modotti's short, intense life (1896-1942) has sparked numerous biographies, but museum curator Patricia Albers's is the first to do true justice to Modotti's photography and to persuasively trace its roots in her personal experiences. Albers does a fine job nailing down the particulars of this remarkable woman's picaresque journey: impoverished childhood in Italy; introduction to bohemianism and radicalism in California; amorous and artistic fulfillment in Mexico; a murder that launched her into the maelstrom of Communist Party activism in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Spain; return to Mexico and premature death. Even more importantly, Albers conveys the essence of Modotti's haunting images, which displayed a modernist technique similar to that of her lover Edward Weston, but applied it to the respectful, loving portrayal of Mexico's common people. Contemporary readers may regret Modotti's decision to abandon photography in 1932 and her unflinching loyalty to Stalinism (including a decade-long liaison with a particularly dogmatic party functionary), but Albers makes readers understand that the same passion that fueled her art and her many love affairs underpinned her commitment to Communism. Modotti's story is not one of reasoned choices and measured steps, but a wild, romantic saga of intrigue, heartbreak, excess, and catastrophe all vividly captured in this poignant book. --Wendy Smith

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Tina Modotti (Monographs)

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Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti was born in Undine, Italy on 16 August 1896. Daughter of an Italian machinist who immigrated to the United States in 1906. After completing her education in Italy and Austria, Modotti worked in an Undine textile factory before joining her father in 1913 in San Francisco, where she worked as a seamstress and dressmaker in a silk factory. In 1917 Mottotti made her debut as an actress. She married poet and painter Roubaix de l'Abrie Richey and moved to Hollywood the following year. Whilst working as a model and actress in several Hollywood films in 1920 and 1921, Modotti met Edward Weston and began a romance with him around 1921. Her husband died in Mexico City the next year, prompting her first visit to the country she would return to photograph in 1923, first as Weston's assistant and apprentice and later as his professional partner. She and Weston had an intimate relationship of mutual influence, working together regularly from 1922 to 1930 in San Francisco and in Mexico, where they had studios in Tacubaya and Mexico City. She published her images, which included portrait studies, in the magazines Mexican Folkways and Formas. Modotti became a revolutionary activist in the early 1920s and developed strong ties with members of the Mexican Artists Union group, including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Diego Rivera, Charlot, Orozco, and Siqueiros. In 1927 Modotti joined the Communist Party, and her political affiliations and activities caused her to be deported from Mexico in 1930. She abandoned photography for political activism moving to Moscow, where she worked for International Red Aid, a relief organization from 1931 to 1934. Modotti moved to France in 1934 and worked in Madrid and Valencia, Spain, from 1935 to 1938. She was a reporter for the Republican newspaper Ayuda and worked for revolutionary movements and the International Red Cross from 1936 to 1938. She returned to Mexico City in 1939, photographed, travelled, and continued her political work until her death in 1942. Modotti's work has received deserved attention in recent years after a long period of neglect. Her photographs were included in the 'Women of Photography' touring exhibition of 1975, and she was the subject of a two-woman show with the painter Frida Kahlo in 1982-1983 in London and New York City. She has been honoured by one-woman shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1977), Festival Internazionale delle Donne in Arezzo, Italy (1978), and the Museum of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland (1980). Many of her most powerful images, such as Mexican sombrero with hammer and sickle, are modern in aesthetic, but political in content. She travelled throughout Mexico recording murals, cultural and religious icons, women in Tehuantepec, and workers at their daily tasks. Modotti was a revolutionary in all matters, from her political activism to her modern and high profile personal life, and her elegant and forthright photography.

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Tina Modotti Photographs

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The Italian-born photographer and Marxist revolutionary Tina Modotti (1896-1942) first visited Mexico with the American photographer Edward Weston. There she became acquainted with the painters Diego Rivera an Jose Clement Orozco and with major political activists. She attempted to merge art with politics, and her photographs mirror her partisan ideals and burgeoning social consciousness. This book traces the evolution of Modotti's photographic career to the time when she abandoned art for the life of a communist activist. The photographs reproduced here were taken during her seven years in Mexico (1923-1930) and include "Roses", which in 1991 commanded the highest price that had ever been paid for a photograph at auction.

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Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life

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Now widely recognized as one of the early twentieth century's most extraordinary photographers, Tina Modotti was remembered until recently more for her relationship to Edward Weston than for her own strong, sensuous work. This comprehensively produced biography, now published for the first time in paperback, captures in over 100 striking photographs and a sympathetic, meticulously researched text the fullness of a life wholly committed to political, personal, and artistic freedom. From her early days in Hollywood as a silent film actress, through the creative, fruitful years in Mexico with Weston and her political exile in 1930s Europe, to her sudden death in 1942, Tina Modotti's courage, clear vision, and dramatic flair made her one of the most internationally controversial and widely admired artistic figures of her day. Perceptive and authoritative, Tina Modotti lifts the veil on a fragile life of iron.

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Tina Modotti. Den Mond in drei Teile teilen (German Edition)

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»Fotografin und Revolutionärin« so ist das Etikett auf Tina Modotti seit den siebziger Jahren. Christiane Barckhausen näherte sich dieser beeindruckenden »Frau des 20. Jahrhunderts« aus dem mit ihr empfundenen Widerstreit zwischen Kampf und Kunst. Tina Modotti lebte beides. Als Fotografin schuf sie Kunstwerke in Licht und Schatten, als Revolutionärin tauschte sie die Kunst gegen den organisierten Kampf für eine menschliche Welt.

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Tina Modotti: Between Art and Revolution

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A charismatic stage and screen actress; a model whose beauty inspired some of the most arresting images of the 20th century; a visionary photographer; a revolutionary with deep commitments to communism; a woman whose life, loves and death were controversial; Tina Modotti (1896-1942) was all of these. Her life was one of almost unimaginable glamour, scandal and turmoil. This biography aims to portray Modotti accurately and fairly, cutting through the distortions of myth and rumour that surround her. Perhaps best known as the lover, model and apprentice of American photographer Edward Weston, Modotti emerges in these pages as a complex woman, deeply passionate in her relationships as well as her art and politics. Historian Letizia Argenteri examines an array of international historical documents and letters as she traces the path of Modotti's life and career through Italy, California, Mexico, Germany, Moscow and Spain. Argenteri tells the story in detail, casting light on the mysteries of Modotti's life and placing her in the political and social milieu of her time.

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