I admit it, I am a big fan of the 20’s: I cannot say if it is because of the bob haircuts, the intellectual freedom, the flappers’ dresses or the vanguards. Probably it is the entire mix itself. The 1920s are a pretty peculiar decade: it is set in-between two bloody world wars, and at the doorstep of a political and economic crisis that engulfed the globe. At the same time, it is a period of a great cultural activity: even in Italy, cities such as Turin, Milan and Venice hosted circles of intellectuals and artists (both men and women) where arts, politics and music were at the centre of their debate.
Nonetheless, away from the big centres, the main concern was to make ends meet. For a young woman growing up in rural areas, arts, politics and emancipation might have seemed inaccessible worlds. It is in this context that I met Tina Modotti, one among the first italian and international photojournalists. Even after over 70 years from her passing, her work maintains a incredible resonance: Palazzo Madama in Turin is currently holding a rich retrospective, open until the 5th of October 2014. The catalogue of the exhibition is published by Silvana Editoriale and you can find it here.
Tina was born in 1896 in Udine, from a poor family with ties to the Socialist movement: her youth was marked by both the hardships of her social condition, as much as the sense of solidarity and rebellion embedded with it. In 1905, her father emigrated to the United States, while his daughter followed him to San Francisco only in 1913. The arrival to America marked a gradual but radical change in her existence: despite the difficulties, Tina never stopped dreaming of a different life.
In 1915, while visiting the “Pan-Pacific Exhibition” she met Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey (also known as Robo), a poet and a painter. Two years later, they married and moved to Los Angeles. The relationship with Robo opened a new phase for Modotti: she was introduced to his group of friends, artists and intellectuals, which included the photographer Edward Weston. Weston played a very significant role in Tina’s life: through him, she discovered her passion – and her talent- for photography. They were very close to each other, both on a personal and a professional level. In August of 1923, a year after Robo’s death, Weston and Modotti travelled to Mexico together: there she started to practice photography with painstaking care, under Edward’s lead.
Modotti’s visual language presents connections with that of her master, yet it always retains its own identity. Weston is well known for his ability to turn simple objects into abstract compositions, in a manner that it is almost scientific. This taste for the essential is found in many images by the Italian photographer, in particular those taken at the beginning of her career: roses, glasses, drapes and bystanders at a circus show, are portrayed in a crisp and neat style, excluding any unnecessary element. Nevertheless, none of her photographs seems to trap its subjects into statuary stillness: the natural subjects, the roses in particular, all maintain a sense of tangible softness.
Tina’s penchant for human subjects soon became a prominent part in her work, as much as it was tied to her political activity (in 1927 she signed up to the Mexican Communist party). Modotti’s sensitivity towards the human condition and the sufferance related to it, led her to portray both women and men with such passion to defy death itself. When her partner Mella was murdered, during the inner conflicts of Communism, she photographed him one last time on his deathbed. The young Cuban seems asleep, with a hint of a smile on his lips. At the same time, his closed eyelids and the slightly tense muscles suggest a restless slumber, a reminder of a far more dramatic reality.
Tina’s ability of giving three-dimensional depth to humanity can be noticed in her series about Mexican mothers and women.There is no trace whatsoever of the sugarcoated vision of motherhood, as it is traditionally depicted. The chubby child carried by the woman in the picture titled “Mother with child, Tehuantepec” does not look like a cherub, we cannot even see his face, actually. The composition highlights the muscles in the child’s small body as much as it underlines the woman’s effort in holding him up with one arm only. In one single picture Modotti reminds us that being a mother is a daily battle, especially when one is lacking money. All the Mexican women captured by the photographer, offer a vision of humanity that is imbued with dignity, courage, even happiness, but also great fatigue. The young women in her images can be either serious or smiling, but they are never motionless figures to treat like a decorative piece: they are people who deserve the audience’s respect. Even when she focuses on men, the perspective is the same: men and women are all equally depicted with dignity, without recurring to any sad stereotypes.
Modotti’s commitment to Communism in Mexico was shared by other artists she was friends with: among them there were activist painters such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Tina’s work was also published on a few magazines: New Masses, Mexican Folkways, Forma, El Machete. Two pictures on the covers of New Masses dated 1927 and 1928 show her political beliefs: in the first, we see two dusty and wrinkled hands resting on a shovel; in the second a hammer and a sickle lay crossed on a sombrero. This last picture is a clear testimony of the photographer’s ability to exploit the power of symbolic synthesis. These three objects are employed as elements of a metaphor, still they do not lose their connection with the physical reality. Modotti’s visual language was an active protagonist in the debate that existed in the world of photography at the time: she rejected the typical Pictoralist soft and ethereal pictures, in favour of clear and detailed shots, in other words realistic.
During the 1930’s, the photographer abandoned her job, dedicating all of her time to the Party. With the outbreak of the war and the Nazi-fascist dictatorship at the head of the conflict, the situation became more and more critical so that her involvement with Communism put her to the test. The political commitment during war times can be a double edged sword: people and events, as if trapped in a web, find themselves progressively entangled in situations that are out control. Underneath the dark shadow of ideologies, the protagonists of history become soldiers at the service of absolutism, where no space is left for inner conflicts. She was expelled from her beloved Mexico in 1930 where managed to return only in 1939. Three years later she passed away.
Lisa Dal Lago
