b.1896, Udine; d.1942, Mexico City

“I try to produce not art but honest photographs, without distortions or manipulations,” Tina Modotti wrote, extending the ‘straight’ aesthetic of the West Coast Photographic Movement towards the graphic sensibility and formal objectivity of social realism. A political activist, she was aligned with the Comintern and became a member of the Mexican Communist Party shortly after emigrating to Mexico City with Edward Weston (whom she took as a lover) in 1922. There, Modotti and Weston moved in avant-garde circles and counted among their friends Frida Kahlo, Diego Riviera and Jean Charlot. In 1930, as part of the government’s anti-communist campaign, Modotti was exiled from Mexico. She remained a subversive figure, joining the fascist resistance in Germany and Italy before seeking political refuge in Russia in 1931. This move marked the end of her photographic career. She later returned to Mexico under a pseudonym but did not return to her camera.