Tina Modotti :: Romantic and Revolutionary Photographer

hey everybody Ted Forbes here and welcome back to the Art of Photography in this video I want to share with you guys the work of Tina mot and Tina is a little bit more obscure of a photographer it's not that she's not known at all but she's kind of famous for doing several things she started her career uh as an actress in silent films and became somewhat known for that and after becoming Edward Weston's mistress and moving to Mexico there was a period of about 9 years where she was very heavily involved in photography and did a considerable amount of work and I think it's interesting because when you look at notable photographers throughout the history of photography her body of work is considerably less than most people uh in terms of output but I think the quality of her work is still very high and I think she's really worth exploring So today we're going to talk about Tina MTI so without further Ado let's go look at some [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] work Tina mad was born asunta Adelaide luigia MTI modini in 1896 at the age of 16 she moved from her native Italy to the United States with her father mad soon developed an interest in performing arts and appeared in several plays operas and silent movies while living in San Francisco 5 years later she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film mot became known for playing the fem fatal and in 1920 landed the starring role in the silent film the Tiger's coat Tina showed an interest in photography from an early age her uncle atro modotti ran a photography studio in Italy and later her father ran a similar studio in San Francisco after moving to Los Angeles with her boy friend Robo Richi Tina soon became friends with Edward Weston Weston became a mentor and inspiration for both Mod's development as a fine art photographer and by 1921 she was modeling for Weston and the two soon began an affair mot's boyfriend Robo went to Mexico in December of 1921 unaware of Tina's affair with Weston he took a portfolio of Weston work hoping to work out an exhibition in Mexico while Tina was on her way to Mexico to join him she found that he had died 2 days before her arrival of smallpox the following year Tina mounted a two-e exhibition of Robo and Weston's work at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City Weston moved to Mexico the following year leaving behind his wife and three of his four children Tina set up and managed Edward studio in return for his mentoring her as a photographer Weston was taken by Mexican culture and was inspired by local folk artart and Landscape mot on the other hand was more interested in people in the modernist aesthetic she soon found a community of cultural and political Avant gists who she became closely associated with including Freda Callo and Diego Rivera as her photography skills began to mature moda's work included lyrical images of peasants and workers and experiments with Architectural Interiors flowers and urban Landscapes Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo notes two distinctions in Mod's work being both romantic and revolutionary the Romantic aspects of her work undoubtedly influenced by Weston and the Revolutionary from her growing interest in politics in 1926 Weston signed a contract with writer Anita brener to photograph her book on Mexican folk art mot and Weston were joined by Edward's son Brett the job was quite large requiring over 400 8 by10 negatives and prints Brett was brought up to speed at a Breakneck pace and learned how to make Prince while traveling through Mexico in search of lesser known native art the project took months and by the end Edward's relationship with Tina was over at the end of the project Edward and Brett returned permanently to California madadi continued her works as a photographer and in 1929 did her first onew woman retrospective Exhibition at the National Library which was advertised as the first revolutionary photographic exhibition in Mexico by this time Tina had been a member of the Mexican Communist party for several years years and her work was very politically charged in 1929 modot's close friend Julio Antonio Mela was assassinated presumably by agents of the Cuban government soon there was an assassination attempt on Mexican president Pascal Ortiz Rubio and MoDOT was questioned about both crimes in 1930 she was expelled from Mexico as the result of an anti-communist and anti-immigrant press campaign madadi evaded police through Rotterdam Berlin and Switzerland before making her way back to Italy to join the anti-fascist resistance before proceeding to Moscow in 1931 after this move to Russia no photographs survive and is presumed that mot never photographed again during the rise of the Spanish Civil War mad left Mexico for Spain following the collapse of the Republican movement she returned to Mexico under a false identity 2 years later MoDOT died under somewhat suspicious circumstances though the official autopsy indicated heart failure she was 46 the interesting thing about Tino ADI is that we're looking at um an artist whose entire artistic output was pretty short and relative to other historically significant photographers and we're talking about an output that lasted about 9 years from 1921 to 1930 while during a period while she was living in Mexico and the book that I'm using for this today is called tina mudi revolutionary photographer and it's on Ocean press I think I'll link it up in the show notes I have kind of mixed feelings about this book The essays are are are fairly well written um but the book is pretty small again we're dealing with an artist that doesn't have a lot of output the printing is decent in here I mean it's an inexpensive book so it's you know you're not going to be let down by that but what drives me nuts about this book and I'm going to show you as we go through is that because Tina was in a lot of creative circles uh her relationship with Edward Weston which we'll talk about there are a lot of discredited Works in here that uh there is no photo credit on that are kind of implied that their teen is work and they're not and I'll Point those out as we go along but what's interesting is is Tina and and this is the other thing is when you start looking at Tina madadi you're entering Tina's world and she had started her career in California living with her dad he had a failed photography business that lasted a little while but did not succeed um she was very interested in the Performing Arts and she became U an actress in Los Angeles and starred in a very well-known silent film and was known was an actress and so therefore she was photographed quite a bit of course she was also Edward Weston's mistress moved to Mexico with him during that time of studying with Weston is where you see the bulk of her work and there are some moments in here that are exceptional and I think that's why she is historically significant and her involvement in politics and communism uh probably doesn't have the same impact today but at that time it was extremely radical and really after she left Mexico there isn't any photography that exists that anybody knows of so we're looking at had a period of about 9 years and and I kind of want to go through this book and show you the cover image of this is gorgeous and there's a set of images in here which would begin with this one which is uh one of my favorite portraits this is a heavily cropped image with no photo credit this is Johan hagm and you know I've seen this miscredited as a self-portrait and it just simply is not and Tina was a wonderful photographer but Johan hgm was a very different photographer did these beautiful portraits Tina was one of his subjects and you know it's worth getting for the supplemental photo in here I guess I'm just saying it frustrates me because they're either not credited or they're miscredited at times and so it's a a bit of a bummer but I want to start out with a series here of still life images that Tina did and the influence of Edward Weston uh is quite obvious on these um the soft light um the placement of the still life and what's significant about these images though is what they are and you know you're looking at an italian-born woman who ended up in Mexico and she and Weston were both in different ways fascinated with Mexican culture um they became friends in this circle of kind of Bohemian artists that included Diego Rivera and fredao and Tina was very wrapped up in that culture and communism was a big political uh passion of hers and it's interesting because if you look at what was going on in Latin America during the 1920s uh in this somewhat rise of Communism and these are obviously an Ode to that and as I mentioned in the bio a minute ago there were kind of two sides to his work the romantic and the Revolutionary and these still lives combine both of those subjects because you obviously have the ccle you have the somber so the the idea of the working class in here which at the time was very threatening uh to foreign interests namely the United States it was threatening to uh you know the the wealthy in Mexico and The Mexican government and so this was you know very taboo to be working um with this kind of subject matter and at the same time uh she does it so beautifully I mean I think they they have a different impact today because because a lot of art has to deal with context and this is context of Mexico in the 1920s and so anyway a series of still lives that do this with the corn you know significant of the workers I love this with the guitar and then you know the um the belt of of ammunition and uh these are beautiful shots the the you can see the impact that Weston had on her as a photographer even though she did work that moved away from the stuff Weston did um and she did some pretty amazing portraits as well um these are a few of these um there's a little this is where it starts to get confusing too because you know this is kind of the the circle of people she was running around with we have Diego Rivera and freedy callow and at the time the Mexican muralist movement was going on which Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera were doing these just beautiful murals uh that were very lyrical in their depiction of scenery and people and she was part of this circle she didn't actually make murals herself but she photographed quite a bit of them another miscredited photo this is actually a Weston portrait and a very well-known one of Diego Rivera beautiful portrait but sorry it's just not Tina madadi I I understand why this book is put together with these photos cuz I think they're going after Tina as a person as a cultural figure but it it it's just frustrating to see things not labeled and I don't know if they couldn't get the copyright and decided to print them anyway and didn't label them or what the problem was there but I just think that's a little bit sloppy for a publisher to do that and I'm sorry to call him out on this but that's is what it is and if you don't know much about Tina's work it's easy to go in there and assume you know something's not labeled that it is tinas and it's not uh these are some of the murals that she photographed um you know black and white at the time and uh she was kind of uh dealt with a lot of document documentational photography as such as well um this is hers this is a really um wonderful portrait of Diego Rivera with the cigar and the kitten on his shoulder of course Diego was quite a large man and uh very strong personality as well um some more still life images and these Cales I have actually shown on the show before a while back I love these and I love the composition that's going on here that she uses the entire and this is a full- bleed shot but it's close to what the crop is because she does use the entire um frame of the image the entire ground and I love the way she's put just these lies up at the very top edge of the image and the negative space that you see in the image is allowed to breathe and show through uh very mature shot again there's not a lot of work that survives and so it's interesting when you kind of look at these particularly the Botanical images or something that you really like the feel of to think what it could have been had Tina you know remained a photographer and state of Mexico or whatever and you know it's it's like you see an artist who had this enormous ability and Talent with the camera but it stopped and uh anyway another wonderful still life of this typewriter here um some more images um we're going to get into the Revolutionary side of Tina and again out of context these images don't make a lot of sense they appear to be Street photographs of workers in Mexico and in actuality what they were was a promotion for the working class she had jobs working for several uh radical Publications that were going around Mexico at the time and a lot of these images were probably done for that and so what we do see is kind of this personification and this kind of lyrical um portrayal of the Mexican worker at that time and some of these are great I love this guy with all the stuff strapped to his back um they're really neat and I think they're very culturally significant this is amazing too these are tamali Shucks and uh I just think those are really great they're just husks that are all bound together for making tamali this is another well-known image of hers um it's just called ombre cona which means man with a beam as the workers moving that way shot from the ground up to give kind of a prominence and importance to the figure being shot which uh you know is fairly conventional of work um from that time in the 20s uh this is another image that I think has that spark that makes you think wow what if she'd continued and what we're seeing is obviously a very simple shot an overhead view of this crowd and they're all wearing the hats and there is such a beauty that comes with this um the you know pattern of of heads that are being shown here but I think also what's interesting too is the cultural significance of this now obviously Tina was not of Mexican nationality but being a part of that culture and having a a a legitimate interest in it um you do see that come through in the work and this is one of my favorite shots I absolutely adore this another one I want to show you here and I'm going to point you to another source on this as well because this is an okay print but um there are several images and I'll put a link in the show notes on this that Museum of Modern Art New York owns and you can see them on their website and they're beautiful and there's a different print of this that has a more sepia color to it that I think works a little better but is this woman with this jug and and I love the the the water lines that you see on it and it's a it's a neat image and like I said it's not that the book is poorly printed it's okay but there are some other resources as well um the two that I can think of off the top of my head were uh Museum of Modern Art New York so mom's website and then also the Philadelphia Museum of Art has a pretty significant photography collection and uh they do have a couple of teen's works as well so I will link up to both of those in the show notes this is a fairly well-known shot of hers as well with this woman uh you know with the with the basket on her head but anyway it's an interesting book and uh of course it's non-expensive book and when you get to the end they're trying to sell you more books but whatever anyway it's probably worth owning uh because it's inexpensive and if you want to get a feel uh for the overall work of Tina Madu I think this is a good place to start I will try and track down the other book as well for maybe a future episode um you know she didn't do a lot of work and we're dealing with a short time span were eventually the the radical nature and some of the associations that she had and not to mention uh someone who was murdered and assassination attempt on the president led to a lot of questioning and in a nutshell she was expelled from Mexico made her way back through Berlin and eventually to Russia uh and what's interesting is she came back to Mexico uh probably about the time she was 40 and under a false identity and was died under suspicious circumstances is kind of How It's been left um the official autopsy quote unquote said she died of heart failure but being that she was in her 40s um I don't know but anyway really interesting figure um and that's Tina motti I want to take a second give a shout out to our sponsor today who are the awesome folks over at linda.com if you're not familiar with linda.com they have one of the most extensive online libraries of video training available anywhere and come on over the computer because I want to show you Linda Linda is an amazing website and for it's a monthly subscription but you have access to the entire library and as you can see if you go under browse the library they have pretty much every aspect of Visual Communications figured out here including a lot of stuff on photography if you go to photography uh they have software training they've got course topics for instance I just pulled up portrait photography here and as you can see they literally got thousands of videos on here and they hit at every level from beginner intermediate to Advanced and you can do an entire course on a subject or you can just look for a video that you're interested in seeing if you're interested in checking out lend.com for yourself I highly recommend you do so and uh they have an offer right now for Art of Photography viewers where you can get seven days of unlimited access to the entire website what you want to do to get that is head over to this link that I'm going to give you which is linda.com aop that is Linda with a Y linda.com aop that's going to give you 7 Days of unlimited access to the entire website and go check it out and see if this is right for you I've used Linda for years long before they were ever a sponsor on the show and I think you're really going to like it because I absolutely think the world of Linda so anyway once again that is linda.com aop and I want to give a special shout out and thanks to the folks at linda.com for once again sponsoring another episode of The Art of Photography I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode and for me Tina madad represents a very interesting type of artist if you consider that her output spanned about 9 years of work and that she was extremely talented and extremely dedicated and driven during that time to produce on that high a level um I mean that's not completely uncommon because you do see this in other disciplines if you take you know music for an example and you have Mozart who you know just had thousands of pieces of work that were out there and just non-stop was composing and writing and then compare that to somebody like Charles IES who had a much more small catalog that was very select you know it it's not uncommon but I think what the uncommon part about Tina is that she achieved that efficiency during a very brief part of her life she didn't live to be very old uh she died as I mentioned under suspicious circumstances it's a little sketchy on how she passed away but a very interesting Legacy and the other reason I wanted to include her today uh in the work that we're doing is that I know that I tend to pick photographers to feature on here to introduce you to that are either American or european and usually a little more mainstream even when they are obscure they kind of fit in with a certain Style aesthetic and when I was researching Tina I realized that Mexico in Latin culture is something that I really haven't picked up on a lot of and so what I want to try to do in the weeks coming is pick artists from different cultures that aren't necessarily Europe and America and I think Tina is a great introduction to that of course she was European she was born in Italy um however you know it was her immersion in the Mexican culture during the 1920s her associations with Diego Rivera and Freda cow um that you know kind of opened my thoughts into would be interesting to explore the real deal a little bit so I hope that Tina is a little bit of a Lynch pin into that once again guys if you enjoyed this video remember to like it and is always share it with your friends and remember to subscribe to the Art of Photography I will send you more videos for free just for hitting that subscribe button and once again guys this has been another episode of The Art of Photography I'll see you guys in the next episode [Music] later [Music]

Channel: The Art of Photography

Views: 67,050

Keywords: Tina Modotti (Visual Artist), photography, photographer, mexico, Frida Kahlo (Visual Artist), Diego Rivera (Visual Artist), 1920's, Roaring Twenties (Literature Subject), Edward Weston (Visual Artist), Politics (TV Genre), Revolutionary (Profession)

Id: 1NZonNPbsnU

Length: 19min 1sec (1141 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2015