Modotti, Tina

Tina Modotti was an Italian photographer, model, actress, and political activist. In 1918, she met photographer Edward Weston in Los Angeles, soon becoming his favorite model and, later, partner. Together, the two moved to Mexico in the early 1920s, where Modotti befriended Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their community of cultural and political avant-gardists. Modotti created work bridging the Romanticism of Mexican culture and the radically charged political climate of Latin America in the early twentieth century, photographing peasants and workers, architectural interiors, flowers, and urban landscapes. But by 1930, she stopped making artwork, dedicating herself exclusively to political causes. Modotti's work is held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Baltimore Museum of Art.