Tina Modotti: Radical Photographer

Tina Modotti: Radical Photographer by Margaret Hooks is an excellent biography of a major photographer who for too long languished in the shadow of her much more famous mentor Edward Weston.  Not only were Modotti's creative accomplishments overshadowed by the attention given Weston's, they were also the victim of Modotti's own sensational lifestyle which saw her abandon photography altogether for a life of political activism in the cause of international Communism after the murder of her revolutionary lover Julio Antonio Mella in Mexico City in 1929.  As a result, Modotti's oeuvre is much smaller than that of most other major photographers and therefore more difficult to evaluate objectively.  Matters have not been helped by a lack of reliable biographies and critical studies.  Pino Cacucci's Tina Modotti: A Life, for example, is a lurid account that focuses primarily on the photographer's involvement with Soviet agent Vittorio Vidali.  It goes so far as to suggest that Modotti was not only involved in Mella's assassination but in that of Trotsky as well and even hints that Modotti was eventually poisoned by Vidali as her usefulness to the party came to an end.

Biographer Hooks goes a long way to redressing these problems by providing a balanced and compassionate overview of Modotti's entire life.  The inclusion in Hooks' book of reproductions of Modotti's photographs (as well as photos taken by Weston for which she modeled), though not of the highest quality, allows the reader to form his/her own opinion of Modotti's skills.  What emerges is a portrait of an extremely talented and caring, if somewhat naive, woman who allowed her passion for the oppressed to overcome her better judgment as she was inexorably drawn into a political movement whose aims she was not fully able to grasp until it was no longer possible to end her participation in them.

Modotti was born in Italy and emigrated to the U.S. at an early age.  It was her early life as an immigrant in San Francisco that provided her earliest insight into the plight of the downtrodden and displaced.  She herself did not suffer greatly, though, and soon began an acting career that took her to Hollywood where she starred in the silent film The Tiger's Coat and where she eventually married Roubaix "Robo" de l'Abrie Richey.  Although Richey is usually portrayed as a minor figure in Modotti's life, it was his decision to travel to Mexico, where he soon after died, that was the catalyst for Modotti's own relocation to that country.  The influence that Mexico had upon her cannot be overestimated.  Not only did she there come into her own as a photographer, but she also made important connections among that country's most significant artists.  These included such major figures as Diego Rivera, his wife Frida Kahlo as well as muralist José Clemento Orozco, all of whom held radical left wing beliefs.  It was through these associations that Modotti began the political involvement that would prove her downfall.

As a photographer, Modotti is often seen as a mere acolyte of Weston rather than an important artist in her own right.  This is unfair.  While the importance of Weston's tutelage cannot be overlooked, Modotti successfully used the skills he had taught her to express her own unique vision.  Though she had a highly advanced aesthetic sensibility - as can be seen in her famous Calla Lillies (c. 1925) - and was extremely gifted as a portrait artist, Modotti emphasized in her work a radical social conscience entirely missing from Weston's output.  It is in such works as Worker's Parade (1926), Hands Holding Tool (c. 1927) and Mella's Typewriter (1928) that she truly came into her own.

If one seeks reasons for the lack of critical attention paid to Modotti until recently, I think there are two principal causes.  The first is political and fairly straightforward.  At the time of her death in 1942, the U.S. was on the verge of entering the Cold War.  Modotti's status as an avowed Stalinist agent during the Spanish Civil War and afterwards clearly prevented her acceptance and recognition in this country for decades.  The second and more complex cause is that of gender bias.  Modotti was not only a female photographer in a profession dominated by males, she was also an emancipated woman who had a great many lovers over the course of her lifetime.  It can easily be argued that her perceived promiscuity caused her to be held in lower esteem than would otherwise have been the case.  If this is indeed true, then there is clearly a double standard at work inasmuch her lover Weston was never penalized in his professional standing for the many notorious affairs he himself conducted over the years.  At any rate, it is now time to view Modotti independently of her political and personal life and to acknowledge her achievement as one of the twentieth century's greatest photographers.