The Veil of Isis #2

Tina Modotti

"...she transformed herself from an object of beauty used in the art of others to a professional photographer (...) Gradually Modotti's work shows the quests for her own direction and the confidence she gained as her political commitment changed the way she saw the world. Her photographs did not lose their sense of form, but her priorities changed (...) 
 
"...There was a café where politicians, criminals and vaudeville actresses used to meet. But the most spectacular person of all was a photographer, model, highborn courtesan and Mata Hari of the Komintern". This is how the poet Kenneth Rexroth describes Tina Modotti in his memoirs..."

"...In Berlin Tina Modotti becomes a member of the Union of Press Photographers and publishes her images in 'Der Arbeiter-Fotograf', but decides to abandon photography for political activism while in Moscow working for the International Red Cross of the USSR..." 

 "Shortly after, in 1934, she traveled to Spain and at the beginning of the Civil War she joined the Fifth Regiment, where she maintained that for her art was not compatible with the violence of the events. In 1939 Tina returned as an asylum seeker to Mexico, where she continued her political activity through the Alianza Antifascista Giuseppe Garibaldi. A year later, President Lázaro Cárdenas annulled her expulsion..." 
 
"...She died, under strange circumstances - some say of a heart attack and others say due to a communist purge - on January 5, 1942 inside a cab that was taking her home. She was only 46 years old..."

Photograph by Tina Modotti.

Tina Modotti actress.

The music played in the program at minute 24:55, belongs to Silvestre Revueltas the movement titled "Nuit de Yucatan" of the work "La Nuit Des Mayas" (1939).