Background
Tina Modotti was born on August 16, 1896, in Udine, Italy.
model Photographer Revolutionary
Tina Modotti was born on August 16, 1896, in Udine, Italy.
Modotti began work at the age of ten in a textile factory, and after emigrating to San Francisco in 1913. He worked again in a textile mill before setting herself up as a dressmaker. After marrying, she moved to Los Angeles, California, United States, in 1917. She was featured in several Hollywood films, in1920).
In 1921 Modotti met Weston and lived with him in Mexico, from 1923 to 1926, where she took up photography and also modeled for such renowned muralîsts as Diego Rivera and José Orozco, as well as for Weston. While residing in Mexico she contributed frequently to Mexican Folkways magazine and the newspaper El Machete, the revolutionary organ for which she served as the Italian-Spanish translator.
In 1929 Modotti was deported, staying briefly in Berlin, Germany before moving on to Moscow, Russia. While in Europe she contributed to such publications as the British Journal of Photography and the Revue Mensuelle Illustré. In 1931 she relinquished photography to devote herself completely to revolutionary causes and was instrumental in maintaining the Soviet International Red Aid, in 1932.
Modotti worked as a reporter (not a photographer) for the Spanish paper Ayuda. Known simply as "Maria" in her revolutionary work, Modotti returned to Mexico on April 19, 1939, resumed her true name, and once again picked up the camera.
Becoming deeply involved with revolutionary politics, Tina joined the Communist Party in 1927.
Quotes from others about the person
She made her work "highly personal and distinct," said Gustavo Ortiz Hernán in Constantine's Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life. Ideologically she belongs to the avant garde...Her photographs can be easily classified: works of pure composition in which concerns for perspective, construction, and dimension reveal the skill of the artist in handling her medium."