Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary - Hardcover

Hooks Tangeman, Margaret

4.14

35 ratings by Goodreads

9780044407980: Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 004440798X ISBN 13: 9780044407980

Publisher: Rivers Oram Press/Pandora List, 1993

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A lavishly illustrated portrait of one of the most significant women photographers of the 20th century.. Here is the definitive portrayal of the brilliant, iconoclastic woman who throughout her life (18961942) oscillated between her passion for her art and her fervor for radical politics. Tracing Modotti from her early years in Italy to 1920s Hollywood, then to vibrant Mexico City and on to Berlin and Moscow, and eventually to war-torn Spain, Hooks magnificently portrays Modotti's tempestuous lifeher romantic, artistic, and political liaisons with Edward Weston, Diego Rivera, and Pablo Neruda. Incorporating interviews with Modotti's contemporaries and new archival material, Tina Modotti dramatically revives a fascinating life and secures Modotti's rightful place alongside Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe as one of the most accomplished women artists of our era.

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Review:

Hooks (a Mexico-based journalist) offers a well-researched, deeply sympathetic, and superbly illustrated biography of the passionate Tins Modotti (1896-1942), whose love of Communism, photography, and men made her a legend in her own time. Modotti emigrated in 1913 from Italy to San Francisco, where she found a niche in theatrical circles, but her marriage to artist Robo Richey soon took her to Hollywood and a brief movie career. Then her close relationship with photographer Edward Weston - as his model, lover, and, ultimately, apprentice - gave more of an outlet for her talent than either her marriage or the movies and, after her husband's death in Mexico, she and Weston went there to experience their own artistic awakening. They contributed to the creative ferment fed by Mexico's political turbulence, but their happiness was short-lived, with Weston returning to the US alone. Modotti - who became the favorite photographer of the muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco - took part increasingly in the revolutionary struggles sweeping the country, but when, in 1929, her exiled Cuban Communist lover was assassinated at her side on a Mexico City street, the ensuing publicity branded her as immoral and she rapidly became persona non grata. Expelled from Mexico, she journeyed through Germany to the Soviet Union, working eventually as a Communist field operative in Spain during the Civil War but abandoning photography entirely. In 1939, Modotti returned secretly to Mexico, only to die mysteriously three years later. A bit marred by unleavened prose, but a thorough account in words and photographs of an exceptional woman whose tragic life was nevertheless one of uncommon achievement. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis:

Tina Modotti was destined for notoriety and acclaim, but her legendary beauty and flamboyant life have eclipsed her genius. This biography reveals a woman as passionately committed to her art of photography and politics as she was to her series of lovers.

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