Tina Modotti (1896–1942) - Elegance and Misery Mexico City 1928

10 ED 3/5

TINA MODOTTI - Elegance and Misery
Mexico City 1928
"Elegance and Misery, Mexico City" (also cataloged as Elegance and Poverty or La elegancia y la pobreza) is one of Tina Modotti’s most famous social-realist works created in 1928.

This print was produced in the context of the first German Modotti exhibition, organized by NGBK Berlin, 1989 and with the collaboration of the Museum of Photography of the National Photograph Library in Pachuca, Mexico in charge of the Modotti negatives provided by Vittorio Vidali, Trieste, through Carlos Vidali.
• Unlike Modotti’s usual straight-photography aesthetic, this piece utilizes direct juxtaposition—contrasting two distinct social realities in post-revolutionary Mexico.
• The Contrast: The image pairs elements of wealthy, high-fashion elite life against scenes of severe poverty and labor conditions in Mexico City.
• The photomontage was published on July 28, 1928, in El Machete, the official newspaper of the Mexican Communist Party (PCM). It ran under the heading "Los de arriba y los de abajo" ("Those on top and those on the bottom").

The Berlin exhibition has been on tour ever since always in updated format as recently shown at Museo Cerralbo, Madrid, PHotoESPAÑA 2022 and subsequent places.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrKmxgnf3pI&t=44s

Tina Modotti (born Assunta Adelaide Luigia Modotti Mondini,
(August 16/17, 1896 – January 5, 1942)
was an Italian American photographer, model, actor, and revolutionary political activist for the Comintern. She left her native Italy in 1913 and emigrated to the United States, where she settled in San Francisco with her father and sister. In San Francisco, Modotti worked as a seamstress, model, and theater performer and, later, moved to Los Angeles where she worked in three film productions. She later became a photographer and political activist and aid worker in Spain.

In 1923, Tina Modotti returned to Mexico City with Edward Weston. She agreed to run Weston's studio free of charge in return for his mentoring her in photography.
Together they opened a portrait studio in Mexico City. Modotti and Weston quickly gravitated toward the capital's bohemian scene. which included Frida Kahlo, Lupe Marín, Diego Rivera, and Jean Charlot.
Modotti also became the photographer of choice for the Mexican mural movement, documenting the works of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. Between 1924 and 1928, Modotti took hundreds of photographs of Rivera's murals at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City. Modotti's visual vocabulary matured during this period, such as her formal experiments with architectural interiors, blooming flowers, urban landscapes, and especially in her many beautiful images of peasants and workers.
In 1926, Modotti and Weston were commissioned by Anita Brenner to travel around Mexico and take photographs for what would become her influential book Idols Behind Altars.
As a result of the anti-communist campaign by the Mexican government, Modotti was exiled from Mexico in 1930. She first spent several months in Berlin, followed by several years in Moscow.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Vidali (then known as "Comandante Carlos") and Modotti (using the pseudonym "Maria") left Moscow for Spain, where they stayed and worked until 1939.
Modotti left Spain with Vidali and returned to Mexico under a pseudonym.
In 1942, at the age of 45, she died from heart failure while on her way home in a taxi from a dinner at Hannes Meyer's home in Mexico City.