Hands Resting on Tool, 1927
Platinum print
19 x 21.6 cm (7-1/2x 8-1/2 in.)
86.XM.722.3

Very few photographers are as opposite in their styles or objectives as Modotti and Erfurth. These differences shine through instructively in this pair of photographs of hands, made within a year of each other and a continent apart. Photographers reveal themselves by what they choose to study. Erfurth's attraction to the intel- lectual and social elite of Weimar Germany is as evident as Modotti's affinity for the Mexican poor. A revolutionary and a devoted Communist all of her life, Modotti believed that photography and politics are inseparable. Her biography is full of drama and change; it is a spy novel leavened by art, where love and death intermingle in her birthplace in Italy, her adolescence in San Francisco, her con- version to art in Los Angeles, and her fusion of art and politics in Mexico City. Modotti learned photography from Edward Weston in Los Angeles (related to-->> 167, 180,188), but she had little interest in his art-for-art's-sake approach and quickly focused on gritty subjects that symbolize labor and the struggle for civil rights. Through her picture, Modotti declares that the hands of a campesino are as wor- thy a subject as those of the highest-born aristocrat.
(TINA MODOTTI related to-->> 167)

official web site -->> http://www.modotti.com/