拍品专文
Tina Modotti's leftest political leanings influenced her photography dramatically from the mid 1920s until her abandonment of the medium in the 1930s. According to curator Sarah Lowe, Modotti's interests were informed by the actions of the German Communist, Willi Mnzenberg. It was Mnzenberg who organized a "worker photography association" and launched AIZ ("Arbeiter Illustriete Zeitung" or "Workers Illustrated News"), the working class journal that would regularly feature photomontages by John Heartfield (see Lot 258). Modotti's photograph Hands Resting on Tool illustrated an article in another Mnzenberg publication, Der Arbeiter-Fotograf, a monthly mouthpiece for a German photographers' organization. (Lowe, Tina Modotti Photographs, pp. 34-38.)
Ms. Lowe suggests that Modotti's photographs, especially the series she executed in Colonia de la Bolsa, one of Mexico City's poorest ghettoes are comparable to the work she probably saw in the German magazines. They are "radically different in sensibility from the rest of Modotti's work" (ibid, p. 35).
In summarizing this aspect of Modotti's photography, Ms. Lowe observes that, "These photographs bear out the Arbeiterfotograf precept that a camera can be "the eye of the working class." Modotti understood photography's power and identified herself as a worker-photographer." In a 1929 letter to Anita Brenner, publisher of Mexican Folkways, Modotti confessed "I look upon people now not in terms of race [or] types but in terms of classes. I look upon social changes and phenomena not in terms of human nature or of spiritual factors but in terms of economics (ibid, p. 36).
The print offered here is in itself quite different from the other known versions from the same negative. Modotti seemed to prefer a tight cropping, focusing on the two boys hugging. The version offered here, with undoubtedly the full negative, may be unique as no other print of it is known to exist.
Ms. Lowe suggests that Modotti's photographs, especially the series she executed in Colonia de la Bolsa, one of Mexico City's poorest ghettoes are comparable to the work she probably saw in the German magazines. They are "radically different in sensibility from the rest of Modotti's work" (ibid, p. 35).
In summarizing this aspect of Modotti's photography, Ms. Lowe observes that, "These photographs bear out the Arbeiterfotograf precept that a camera can be "the eye of the working class." Modotti understood photography's power and identified herself as a worker-photographer." In a 1929 letter to Anita Brenner, publisher of Mexican Folkways, Modotti confessed "I look upon people now not in terms of race [or] types but in terms of classes. I look upon social changes and phenomena not in terms of human nature or of spiritual factors but in terms of economics (ibid, p. 36).
The print offered here is in itself quite different from the other known versions from the same negative. Modotti seemed to prefer a tight cropping, focusing on the two boys hugging. The version offered here, with undoubtedly the full negative, may be unique as no other print of it is known to exist.