Edward Weston

signed by the photographer in pencil on the image, inscribed '3.00' in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse, mounted to heavy buff paper, numbered '26' in an unidentified hand in pencil in the upper left corner of the mount, matted, 1924

Acquired by the present owner from Donna Schneier, Inc., New York, 1970s

This print:

Mildred Constantine, Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life (New York, 1983), p. 85

Tina Modotti: Photographien & Dokumente (Berlin: Sozialarchiv, 1990), p. 34

Christiane Barckhausen-Canale, Verdad y Leyenda de Tina Modotti (Havana, 1989), p. 112

Valentina Agostinis, Tina Modotti: Gli Anni Luminosi (Pordenone, 1992), p. 48

This photograph is on light-weight gelatin-silver paper with a smooth matte surface. The print encompasses the full array of tones, from absolute black (in the few shadow areas) to cream-colored white (in the subject's uppermost thigh). Much of the image is composed of expertly modulated mid-tones, and this, as well as the print's matte surface, gives the photograph a platinum-like appearance. Close observation reveals slight silvering of the dark areas, wholly appropriate for a print of this age. The print has survived in essentially excellent condition. Examination under raking light reveals no noticeable flaws in the print's surface. A small portion of the print's upper left corner is missing (roughly 1 cm. in area). It is believed that the corner became detached at some point in the distant past. Close examination of the reproductions of this print in the literature (listed above) indicates that the corner was missing when these sources were published, i.e. as early as 1983. Each illustration has been carefully cropped to avoid showing the loss. The break is a clean one, with paper fibers showing through only on the left terminus. The photograph was originally attached to its mount with a thin line of adhesive along each edge of the reverse. The top edge and most of the side edges have since become detached. The top ply of the paper mount has remained attached to the reverse of the print in the areas of separation. The mount is somewhat worn at the edges, and close examination reveals a number of handling creases well away from the print. Two strips of masking take are affixed to the reverse of the mount – these are quite old, and the adhesive is no longer active.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In the summer of 1924, Edward Weston made a series of nude studies of Tina Modotti on the terrace roof of their small house just outside of Mexico City.  These photographs, each of them frankly sensual, constituted a definite break from the nudes he had executed of her or other women before.  The clarity of the images, and their lack of atmospheric affects or suggested narratives, represented yet another step away from the romantic style in which Weston had photographed Modotti earlier in the decade. 

The photograph offered here is a rare surviving print from this series and may be unique.  No other prints of the image have been located as of this writing.  Although the image is reproduced in the Weston/Modotti literature, each of these illustrations traces back to the present print.  The reappearance of this single print of the image, which has remained out of the public eye, in a private collection, since the 1970s, underscores the rarity of much of Weston's work.   Like the previously unknown group of Weston photographs of Miriam Lerner sold in these rooms on 15 and 16 October 2007 (Sale 8349, Lots 4, 6, 187, and 188), the rediscovery of Tina on the Azotea demonstrates the extent to which the photographer's more erotically-charged nudes were printed in very small numbers—likely only for his models—and were not part of his regularly exhibited body of work. 

Weston may have encountered the charismatic, talented, and politically outspoken Tina Modotti as early as 1919 or 1920 in California.  Both were married at the time of their meeting: Weston to the former Flora Chandler, the mother of his four sons, and Modotti to the poet Robaix de L'Abrie Richey.  Weston and Modotti's affair was already established by July 1923 when the couple sailed, along with Weston's eldest son Chandler, to Mexico.  They settled into a small house on the outskirts of Mexico City, and it was there that Modotti took up her complex role as Weston's lover, muse, apprentice, and guide to the vibrant ancient and modern cultures of Mexico. 

Mexico stimulated a change in Weston's work.  Whether it was the clarity of the Mexican light, or his contacts with a new and exciting group of Mexican and expatriate artists, Weston's photographs soon became characterized by a greater amount of detail and an almost obsessive attention to the object in front of his camera.  This change in vision necessitated a change in his technical approach to photographing, and in June of 1924 he purchased a lens that could stop down to a narrow aperture, allowing him to capture his subjects in sharper detail.  In his Daybook he wrote,

'For 25 pesos I purchased a Rapid-Rectilinear lens in a cheaply made shutter.  Now I start a new phase of my photographic career with practically the same objective that I began with some twenty years ago.  My expensive anastigmatic and my several diffused lenses [standard tools for the Pictorialist photographer] seem destined to contemptuous neglect, though it may be that I shall dust them off for an occasional portrait head.  The shutter stops down to 256; this should satisfy my craving for more depth of focus' (Daybooks, Mexico, p. 80).

Thus equipped, Weston attempted to take studies of clouds the following month from the roof of his house.  When the rapid movement of the clouds through the sky made it difficult to capture them photographically, Weston found new subject matter close by, producing the group of photographs from which Tina on the Azotea almost certainly comes.  He wrote,

'My eyes and thoughts were heavenward indeed—until, glancing down, I saw Tina lying naked on the azotea taking a sun-bath.  My cloud "sitting" was ended, my camera turned down to a more earthly theme, and a series of interesting negatives was obtained.  Having just examined them again I am enthusiastic and feel that this is the best series of nudes I have done of Tina' (ibid., p. 83). 

According to Weston authority Amy Conger, the photographer made at least five studies of Modotti from this vantage point (cf. fig. 129 in Conger's Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography). 

In Modotti, Weston found someone who broadened his horizons, as Margrethe Mather had done for him in the previous decade.  Through Modotti, Weston was introduced to a world of people and ideas he would not otherwise have known.  Modotti—whose own mastery of the photographic medium is unequivocal (see Lots 5, 18a, and 84)—posed for Weston throughout the duration of their relationship.  Weston's early portraits and nude studies of Modotti were done in his individualistic early 1920s style, a style which had progressed past the standard vocabulary of Pictorialism but had not yet entered fully into Modernism.  Head of an Italian Girl (Conger 69) and The White Iris (Conger 70), to name just two pictures from early in Weston's and Modotti's relationship, possess a lush, sensual, and romantic beauty.  The study offered here, no less beautiful and made only a few years later, incorporates a radically different photographic approach.  Taken outside the controlled confines of the photographer's studio, and incorporating the disarray of the blanket on which Modotti rests and the roughness of the terrace, the photograph places Modotti's beauty firmly within the corporeal world. 

A series of nude studies that Weston would begin a year later—of Anita Brenner and Miriam Lerner—would take the photographer further into the realm of objective Modernism.  Now icons, these studies would lead, in turn, to his tour-de-force studies of shells and peppers.  But the frank sensuality embodied in Tina on the Azotea would never be as fully realized in Weston's later work as it is in this photograph.