Book Description

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. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

A person worth reading about!
"I look upon people now not in terms of race...but in terms of classes..." wrote Tina Modotti to a friend towards the end of this excellent biography. A complex woman with many passions, Modotti's life is described by Patricia Albers in vibrant terms, totally capturing the reader's attention and taking that reader on a journey through the Italy of Modotti's childhood to the United States and finally Mexico, her chosen home. Along the way Modotti's relationships with such artists as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo is explored as well as with other notables of her time. Through Albers' exploration of her subject, the reader discovers the evolution of Modotti from actress to noted photographer to active politico. Because of Modotti's many facets the book would be an excellent gift choice. This is a story that makes the reader want to snuggle up in a comfortable chair on a rainy day and read until the sun comes out. It is well-written, informative, colorful and very human.

What a Life! - What a book!
Finally! At last, Tina Modotti's fascinating life is fully realized in print! Albers' attentive eye coupled with the gorgeous photos make this an incomparable experience.

fascinating portrait of a complex woman
As someone who has followed the Modotti saga for several years, I was struck by the depth and beauty of Albers' rendering of Tina Modotti's complex life. Shadows, Fire, Snow is a joy to read!

disappointed
Tina Modotti had a fascinating life and she is a great role model for women because of her independence and strength. I think this book does not really make her come alive and concentrated too much on her lovers. I had read a lot of the details on Tina's life in other books on her and I didn't like the way the author uses facile, pop psychology to explain a very complex woman. ... Read more

Book Description

A charismatic stage and screen actress. A model whose beauty inspired some of the most arresting images of the twentieth 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 glamor, scandal, and turmoil. This biography portrays Modotti accurately and fairly, cutting through the distortions of myth and rumor 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 dramatic story in full detail, casting light on the mysteries of Modotti’s life and carefully placing her in the political and social milieu of her time. The many fascinating illustrations in this book further illuminate Modotti’s life. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Vision of Passion
As a famous photographer once stated, photography is aligning the mind, the heart and sight. Scrolling through Modotti's photographs, one feels that she goes beyond by reflecting her passion in her work. This book is an invaluable source portraying Mexican communist art with a flavour of Tina's very special passion. ... Read more

Book Description

Tina Modotti and Edward Weston travelled to Mexico in 1923 at the start of an extraordinary period of artistic creativity that became known as the Mexican Renaissance. Although often perceived as being principally embodied by the politically motivated work of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco, the Mexican Renaissance was shaped by the contribution of dozens of artists, both Mexicans and expatriates, and gave rise to an exceptionally hospitable environment for innovative art-making. The work Modotti and Weston made in the 1920s marks the beginning of a Modernist photographic aesthetic that left an indelible mark on the history of photography in Mexico. Each contributed to this history individually: Modotti is known for beautiful still-lifes that gave way to Modernist images of Mexican workers and poetic revolutionary icons. Weston's Pictorialist-influenced imagery was abandoned in favour of sharp, clear, 'straight' photographs and an engagement with form. Also included in this exquisitely produced book is a selection of images by two Mexican photographers, Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Mariana Yampolsky, whose work was influenced by these two foreigners. ... Read more

Book Description

Tina Modotti has emerged in recent years as one of the important photographers of this century. During her lifetime she struggled to find a balance between her political and social life and her art. A central figure in the modernist photography movement, she documented the people and tumultuous politics of Mexico. Many of her most powerful images, such as Mexican sombrero with hammer and sickle, are modern in aesthetic, but political in content. Her portraits range from hired studio shots of socialites to documentation of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo at a political rally that turned violent. She traveled 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.

The finest of Modotti's images are presented in this volume, accompanied by an essay by Margaret Hooks, author of the award-winning biography Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary (Pandora, 1983). Hooks collects and specializes in Latin American photography, and writes on the subject for publications such as Afterimage, Luna Cornea, and ARTnews.
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Reviews (2)

Not just good ... but Great!
Tina Modotti was not only a good photographer, she was a GREAT one! I don't think we would even know who she was today if it wasn't for her wonderful photographs. I loved this little book and it's a perfect companion to Margaret Hooks' excellent biography: Tina Modotti, Photographer and revolutionary. All Tina fans should have this!

Masterful photographer, Fascinating life
I really enjoyed this lovely book of Tina Modotti's photographs. I thought the selection was quite unigue, not the usual ones I've seen reproduced in other books. In fact several of the photos I'd never seen before. Also the essay helped me put her work in context by showing how she developed as a photographer. To my mind she certainly was a master of photography, as well as a fascinating woman. A good book, at a great price! ... Read more

Book Description

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 (1896-1942) 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 life--her 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. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A passionate, courageous, and inspiring woman!
Tina Modotti was a restless soul on an journey through art, politics, and history. A courageous fighter and humanitarian until the end. Tina is a true heroine with a strong passion for life, and love for photography. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A Revised and Beautiful View of Tina Modotti's Photography
Review Summary:Tina Modotti achieved a remarkable level of accomplishment in a photographic career that spanned merely 7 years and 250 images.Her work captures many of the best elements of the compositional skills of Edward Weston, her mentor and lover, while adding a heart-felt attraction for people that Mr. Weston's work lacked.These images of portraits, still lifes, and architecture from her years in Mexico are much more appealing to me than Mr. Weston's are from the same period.The extensive biographical essay also corrects many misconceptions about Ms. Modotti's life.

Reader Warning:This book contains some partial female nudity, mostly of women nursing their babies.

Review:"Tina Modotti is the best-known unknown photographer of the twentieth century . . . ."Her work exhibits "extraordinary formal clarity coupled with incisive social content."Her style obviously was influenced by Edward Weston, due to their long association and personal closeness.Other influences include the Movimento Estridentista (the Mexican reaction to Futurism), New Vision, and the German Arbeiter-Fotograf movement.The vision is uniquely hers.

My assumption is that you have never seen her work.I certainly never had.Ms. Modotti's images are a nice surprise.Often books that make these kinds of claims about their subject don't have the content to support them.This one does live up to its bold premise about her photography.Of her own work, Ms. Modotti observed that her purpose was "to produce not art but honest photographs."All of her images are contact prints, and her technique shows the minimum of trying to provide eye candy.What they do show is a wonderful eye for the interesting and heart-warming.You will have a much more emotional reaction to these images than to the photographs of many outstanding photographers, a group in which Ms. Modotti belongs.

Relatively unschooled in a formal sense, she was an emotionally-based Communist.Some may not appreciate the political content of some of her images, such as the various ways of portraying the hammer and sickle symbol of the Soviet Union.I thought that these photographs were among the least interesting of her works.

Her life history was an interesting surprise to me.Coming from a poor family in Italy, she appears to have pulled herself up by the bootstraps as a seamstress.First working in garment factories, she probably became a costume seamstress and from there launched her performing career as an actress and model.Often portrayed as the lover and friend of various famous men, she probably viewed them as an appendage to her.History has been successfully revised in the excellent biographical sketch in this book.

My favorite images in the book include:

Edward Weston, 1924; Open Doors, c. 1925; Staircase, c. 1924-26; Convent of Tepotzotlan (Stairs Through Arches), 1924; Geranium, c. 1924-25; Easter Lily and Bud, c. 1925; Interior of Church, 1924; Elisa Kneeling, 1924; Carelton Beals, 1924; Portrait of a Woman, c. 1926-29; Federico Marin, 1926; Ione Robinson, 1929; Two Children or Boys from Colonia del la Bolsa, c. 1927-28; Hands Resting on Tool, 1927; Woman with Flag, 1928; Techuantepec Type (Woman Smiling), c. 1929; and Young Pioneers, 1930.

The images for the first two or three years could easily have been done by Edward Weston, but show a connection to daily living that his more ethereal works do not display.After that, the works definitely separate in content, style, and focus.If you like Mr. Weston's work, you may enjoy comparing his Mexican images with hers.

After producing all but a few of these photographs, Ms. Modotti left Mexico for Russia and eventually played an important role in the Spanish Civil War in evacuating children and as a nurse.All of those parts of her life are recounted in the book's biographical essay.

After you enjoy these uplifting views of the nobility of people, nature, and of human efforts, I suggest that you think about what you convey about these subjects to your children or grandchildren.Do they know what your views are and why you hold them?If not, you might consider taking photographs and writing notes to go with them to help share your vision of the world.Whether they agree or not, you will enrich them in important ways.

Seek out the best in every situation!

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Reviews (1)

Excellent, passionate elegy work!
This collection was very powerful, in that the woman being written about is dead and the intensity of Ms. Gibson's words.Tina Modotti was clearly a strong, passionate woman--one I hope I am on the way to becoming.It isa sad book at times, but illustrates the power of the human spirit--evenafter death. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Women's Review of Books, published by Women's Review of Books on March 1, 1994. The length of the article is 1996 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary.
Author: Kim Sichel
Publication: The Women's Review of Books (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 1994
Publisher: Women's Review of Books
Volume: v11Issue: n6Page: p22(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Fem, published by Difusion Cultural Feminista, A.C. on March 1, 1997. The length of the article is 1278 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: La vida poltica de Tina Modotti. (fotgrafa y militante italiana)(TT: The political life of Tina Modotti) (TA: Italian photographer and militant)
Author: Bibiana Dueas O'Kelard
Publication: Fem (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 1997
Publisher: Difusion Cultural Feminista, A.C.
Volume: v21Issue: n168Page: p42(2)

Article Type: Biography

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Book Description

Italian American photographer Tina Modotti (1896–1942) has become the subject of renewed popular and critical attention with a spate of recent biographies, academic articles, and films. Because Modotti was an intensely engaged political figure whose activism took her to Mexico, the former Soviet Union, and Spain, her biographers have focused primarily on her politics and love life, especially her relationships with Edward Weston, Xavier Guerrero, and Julio Antonio Mella. Now Andrea Noble focuses on Modotti’s photographic output. Her corpus of over 300 images, especially those of postrevolutionary Mexico in the 1920s, is a significant contribution to twentieth-century photography.

Drawing on feminist theories of visual culture, Noble presents a close reading of Modotti’s work and how it fits into its cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts. She also explores how Modotti was “repackaged” by feminists in the 1980s and how she was commodified as an “exotic Mexican body” to promote a collection of women’s fashion. This book offers a new perspective on the work and life of an enduringly fascinating figure. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Blends biography, art criticism and social history
Andrea Noble's Tina Mondotti (0-8263-2254-9, $29.95) focuses on Modotti's photos of postrevolutionary Mexico in the 1920s and also reveals how feminists changed her image in the 1980s, providing an intriguing survey of the changing critical attention to her works and revealing the extent of her achievements. This blends biography, art criticism and social history and provides far more depth and detail than the usual Mondotti monograph. ... Read more

Amazon.com

In 1913 Italian-born Modotti (1896-1943) immigrated to the United States, where she enthusiastically embraced both radical politics and photographer Edward Weston, the first of many prominent men who would love the charismatic artist. Apart from the formally rigorous, socially engaged photographs that made her reputation, Modotti's most ardent passions were for revolutionary Mexico, where she lived from 1922 to 1930, and for Communist activist Julio Mella, whose murder in 1929 engulfed her in the juicy scandal with which Italian journalist Cacucci opens his dishy biography. Modotti spent the 1930s serving the Soviet Union's interests in many of the world's hot spots, notably Spain during its vicious civil war; commitment to Communism gave her a sense of stability her turbulent personal affairs did not. She died mysteriously four years after her return to Mexico, by rumor at the hands of Stalinist poisoners. Cacucci's fascination with abstruse Communist ideological squabbles may not be shared by all readers, and his methodology is decidedly slapdash: he doesn't provide footnotes, and pages of direct dialogue have no discernable source other than the author's imagination. However, his breathless prose certainly conveys the drama of Modotti's short, intense life. --Wendy Smith ... Read more

Reviews (2)

LAUGHABLE for its historical value
Although I agree that San Francisco was home to many artistic and cultural activities that make it distict from any other American city, to assert that it was "Not founded by Anglo-Saxon Protestants, San Francisco developed as a city without Puritan influences, much like the great European cities that favored radical innovations and a healthy indifference toward conventional morality." (can you taste the superiority of the european writer in that quote?)

Anyone who believes that does not know who founded San Fransisco. Guess what. It was Mormons. Yep. They pulled into the bay and off loaded from the Good Ship The Brooklyn, before the gold rush and mass influx of others. Before that, it had been all but abandon as a Presidio by the Spanish. And since I know my history, I can tell you the Mormons of that time had more in common with the Puritanism of the original colonies than other Anglos. But that is just one of the stretches... Of course the Mormons were over run with the advent of the Gold Rush. San Francisco has been a pendulum that swings back and forth from anarchy to corruption in its city government in the last 150 years.

As for the rest of the book, take out some of the added quasi-history spices and it would have been much more valuable, or at least worth recommending. But maybe I shouldn't look at it for historical value, but as a great romance?

An astonishing life!
Tina Modotti -- photographer, model, lover of famous men, revolutionary Communist. What a fascinating life. I finished this biography -- which flows like a novel -- inspired to follow my own convictions and amazed by this bewitching, powerful woman. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Siempre!, published by Edicional Siempre on April 2, 1998. The length of the article is 876 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Una nueva mirada. (la vida de fotgrafa italiana Tina Mondotti, 1896-1942)(TT: A new view) (TA: the life of Italian photographer Tina Mondotti, 1896-1942)
Author: Luis Humberto Gonzlez
Publication: Siempre! (Refereed)
Date: April 2, 1998
Publisher: Edicional Siempre
Volume: v44Issue: n2337Page: p71(1)

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Fem, published by Difusion Cultural Feminista, A.C. on February 1, 1997. The length of the article is 1502 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tina Modotti, fotgrafa.(TT: Tina Modotti, photographer)
Author: Bibiana Dueas O'Kelard
Publication: Fem (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 1997
Publisher: Difusion Cultural Feminista, A.C.
Volume: v21Issue: n167Page: p43(2)

Article Type: Biography

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Statesman (1996), published by New Statesman, Ltd. on May 3, 2004. The length of the article is 1323 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Bread and roses: a communist with a string of colourful lovers, Tina Modotti not only photographed the Mexican revolution, she lived it. Amanda Hopkinson on how her reputation has flourished in recent years.(The Back Half)(Biography)
Author: Amanda Hopkinson
Publication: New Statesman (1996) (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 3, 2004
Publisher: New Statesman, Ltd.
Volume: 133Issue: 4686Page: 48(3)

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