Tina Modotti

by Noble, Andrea

• ISBN13: 9780826322548
• ISBN10: 0826322549
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

Italian American photographer Tina Modotti (1896--1942) has become the subject of renewed popular and critical attention with a spate of recent biographies, academic articles, and films. Because Modotti was an intensely engaged political figure whose activism took her to Mexico, the former Soviet Union, and Spain, her biographers have focused primarily on her politics and love life, especially her relationships with Edward Weston, Xavier Guerrero, and Julio Antonio Mella. Now Andrea Noble focuses on Modotti's photographic output. Her corpus of over 300 images, especially those of post-revolutionary Mexico in the 1920s, is a significant contribution to twentieth-century photography. Drawing on feminist theories of visual culture, Noble presents a close reading of Modotti's work and how it fits into its cultural, historical, and theoretical contexts. She also explores how Modotti was 'repackaged' by feminists in the 1980s and how she was commodified as an 'exotic Mexican body' to promote a collection of women's fashion. This book offers a new perspective on the work and life of an enduringly fascinating figure.

Author Biography

Andrea Noble teaches in the Department of Spanish at the University of Durham, England.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	viii
Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	x
Opening Doors: Feminism's Beyond	1	(27)
Commodity Feminism and the Reading of Roses	28	(31)
Photography and the Politics of Signature	59	(28)
Aesthetics and the Body Politic: Building Contexts	87	(21)
Beside the Abject Body	108	(32)
Notes	140	(15)
Bibliography	155	(10)
Index	165