Tina Modotti

Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and political activist. In 1918, she met photographer Edward Weston in Los Angeles, soon becoming his favorite model and, later, partner. Together, the two moved to Mexico in the early 1920s, where Modotti befriended Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their community of cultural and political avant-gardists. Modotti created work bridging the Romanticism of Mexican culture and the radically charged political climate of Latin America in the early twentieth century, photographing peasants and workers, architectural interiors, flowers, and urban landscapes. But by 1930, she stopped making artwork, dedicating herself exclusively to political causes.

Text © Museum of Contemporary Photography, 2018