In episode 85 of The Great Women Artists Podcast, Katy Hessel interviews the esteemed writer Patricia Albers on TINA MODOTTI!

Tina Modotti (1896–1942) was a trailblazer. Born in Italy, she found herself at the centre of Hollywood in the 1920s, the post-Revolution era of Mexico, in the midst of Communism with the Muralists, the latter of which she captured through raw images, using her camera - her tool - to engage with political and social issues.

Nothing short of a revolutionary, Modotti documented the spirit of era. Her own life was never far from drama. Raised in Italy, in1913 she migrated to the US to join her father. Adored for her striking looks, she soon began work as a model, then an actor, starring ina string of Hollywood silent films. 

Taking up photography, in 1923she moved to Mexico City to join the cultural avant-garde and experimented with intimate, hazy studies of close-up wilted flowers and light-filled architectural environments – some of the earliest examples of abstraction in photography. 

As the 1920s progressed, and her involvement in the Communist movement deepened (officially joining the party in 1927), Modotti turned her lens towards social documentary, photographing empathetic, yet I think triumphant, portraits of locals and labourers, and took her camera to anti-fascist, leftist rallies (with friends Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera). 

However, following the assassination of her then-lover, the Cubist revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, she was forced to leave Mexico and abandon photography entirely. Fleeing Mexico for WeimarBerlin, Soviet Russia and then Spain, in 1939 she returned to MexicoCity, but died three years later in the back of a taxi... Some still question the cause of her death, viewing it with suspicion due to her ardently leftist politics!!!! 

ONE OF THE GREATEST STORIES IN ART HISTORY! ENJOY!

Patricia is the author of Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti and curator of the formerly travelling exhibition, Tina Modotti and the Mexican Renaissance, a show and a book focussing on one of the greatest photographers of the early twentieth century: Tina Modotti.

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Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel

Sound editing by Nada Smiljanic

Research assistant: Viva Ruggi

Artwork by @thisisaliceskinner

Music by Ben Wetherfield

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