Tina Modotti (1896-1942)/Manuel Álvarez Bravo (1902-2002)

platinum print, printing notations by Manuel Álvarez Bravo in pencil and with Vittorio Vidali's Fifth regiment stamp and a typed title label on the reverse, circa 1928, printed between 1976 and 1979 by Bravo (A Fragile Life, p. 140)

The photograph offered here comes originally from the collection of Vittorio Vidali (1900 - 1983), Tina Modotti's close friend and companion during the last 15 years of her life.  Entrusted with Modotti's negatives after her death, the Vidali family gave the photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo, who had known Modotti, an opportunity to print from some of these negatives in the 1970s.  Experimenting with varying papers and printing techniques, Bravo produced a small number of posthumous prints before the negatives were donated to the Museo del la Fotografia in Pachuca, Mexico, in 1979. 

The image offered here, known also as Labor I: Hands Washing, is reproduced in a number of monographs and critical assessments of the photographer's work, among them:

Sarah Lowe, Tina Modotti Photographs (New York, 1995), pl. 75

Mildred Constantine, Tina Modotti: A Fragile Life (New York, 1983), p. 140

Margaret Hooks, Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary (New York, 1993), p. 141

Reinhard Schultz et al., Tina Modotti: Photographien & Dokumente (Berlin, nd), p. 86

Margaret Hooks, Tina Modotti: Phaidon 55 (New York, 2002), p. 77

The image is one of a series of photographs made by Modotti in the cause of social activism.  Sarah Lowe (op. cit., pp. 35-37) discusses the Arbeiterfotograf movement in Europe and Modotti's role, with her camera, as an 'eye of the working class.'  As Lowe points out, the image offered here, and the one in the following lot, are not only photographs of laboring hands, but also of power: 'Through close cropping and elegant compositions,' Lowe writes, 'Modotti created icons that fairly explode.  Literally, these hands do the necessary work for Mexico, while figuratively, they represent the potential political power vested in the campesinos and trabajadores' (ibid., p. 36).    

Prints of the present image are exceedingly rare.  The Museum of Modern Art owns a gelatin silver print made by Modotti, the gift of an anonymous donor.