Tina Modotti

Embracing every aspect of Modotti’s brief but stellar career and filled with archival images and insightful essays, this is certain to be the definitive reference work on a photographer whose art was suffused with humanity, emotion, compassion and technical brilliance. Tina Modotti’s work spans less than a decade, but in that time she created uniquely powerful and lyrical images that combine masterful technique with a deep concern for the rights of the poor and marginalized. Organized thematically, this sweeping overview of her life and oeuvre offers gorgeous reproductions of her portraits, still lifes, architectural images, and documentary photographs. The wide- ranging and substantial biographical material offers important and illuminating background about her experience in the theater and silent film industry, her relationship with Edward Weston and friendships with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, her political radicalization and her activism around worker’s rights and Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Uniquely adept at spanning the genres of abstraction and landscape, portraiture and photojournalism, Modotti was as talented as she was passionate. This tribute to her life and work firmly establishes her as one of the most important photographers of her time.