Central to Edward Weston’s (1886–1958) photography were a series of significant relationships he engaged in with creative women, several of whom were artists. His muses (who also posed for him) included photographers Margrethe Mather, Tina Modotti, and Sonya Noskowiak, painter Henrietta Shore, and model and writer Charis Wilson (his second wife). His relationship with Modotti (1896–1946) had a particularly vital impact on his work, bridging Weston’s early years as a pictorialist photographer and the straight photographs he made for the rest of his career.
The third child in a large Italian family in Udine, Tina Modotti had been exposed to photography through her uncle Pietro who operated a portrait studio. Facing economic hardship, her father Giuseppe (1863–1922) decided to immigrate to America in 1906 where he hoped economic opportunities would be better. He settled in San Francisco and once he found work, he intended to send for his family, a process that happened gradually. In 1911, his daughter Mercedes was the next to come, followed by Tina in 1913 (she was sixteen). Not until 1920 did her mother Assunta and her remaining siblings arrive. After landing in New York, she boarded a train to join her family in California. Taking advantage of her striking good looks, for the next few years, she supported herself as an actress and model.
In 1915, Modotti met Roubaix de I’Abrie de Richey (known as Robo), a painter and poet, and in 1918 they moved to Hollywood, where she hoped to find success in the movie industry. Their move prompted reports that they had wed, however, despite presenting themselves publicly as spouses, they were never in fact legally married.1 Once settled in southern California, they enjoyed an active social life. She and Robo hosted a series of parties, and it was at one of these in 1920 that Modotti first met Weston, and by early 1921 they had begun a passionate affair. She quickly became the photographer’s favorite model, and by 1923 was helping to manage his studio, gradually supplanting his assistant, photographer Margrethe Mather who had worked with Weston since about 1912 (they were occasional lovers, including having a short affair just before Modotti and Weston left for Mexico). Like Modotti’s, Weston’s life presented personal complications, as he was already married and had four sons. He managed to remain friends with Robo, and there was some discussion of their sharing a studio in Mexico.
The year 1922 was a difficult one for Modotti. Robo died on February 9 of smallpox while traveling in Mexico, where he had gone to arrange for an exhibition of Weston’s work. In mourning, Tina dressed soberly in black, dramatically describing her ”eyes full of tears,” regarding the “terrible and tragical”2 death of Robo (whom she had deceived regarding her relationship with Weston). In March, there would be further sadness. Her father Giuseppe, who had suffered from stomach ailments for about a year and a half, was admitted to a hospital in San Francisco on March 7. Diagnosed with stomach cancer, he died within a week at the age of sixty-three. He and Assunta (1863–1936) married in 1892, but for much of the time they were apart, and she had been reunited with her husband just two years before his passing. These twin deaths left the two women bereft.
It was during this time that Weston made a series of portraits of members of Modotti’s immediate family, including several images of Assunta (one is a close-up of her face, her eyes closed), Tina, and Mercedes. Her younger sister Yolanda began working as a receptionist for Weston at this time. Tina Modotti and Her Mother is a photograph of touching serenity: “The asymmetrical composition, the background darkness, one figure almost lost in shadow but leaning over and touching the other; the illumination of the face and hands of the mother; all project a reverence for the harmony between daughter and mother.”3 Tina stands in the background and leans on the back of her mother’s chair, gazing thoughtfully downward. Her mother’s face is softly lit, her expression also pensive. The pictorialist style beautifully captures a tender, quiet moment the two shared. Weston’s composition evokes James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s famous painting, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871), popularly known as Whistler’s Mother. The painting depicts an older woman in a black dress seated in quiet contemplation. In both a framed picture hangs on the wall, a common period device favored by artists influenced by Japanese aesthetics.
Weston and Modotti found themselves personally and professionally at critical points of change. She had decided to become a photographer, and Edward agreed to teach her in return for her running his Mexico studio. He had also made the decision to leave his family and go to Mexico with Tina, and they sailed together at the end of July 1923. The photographs
he took there transitioned from the romantic pictorialism of his early work into the sharp focus that would emerge with the f/64 group in the early 1930s. Absorbed by straight photography, Weston’s work became increasingly formalist. Modotti soon established herself as a talented photographer, and also became deeply involved in political causes, something that did not interest Weston. They grew apart personally and intellectually, their relationship strained by the affairs in which each engaged. They finally parted in 1926, and Weston returned to California.
Andrew Lyngarkos
Edward Weston, Tina Modotti and her Mother, 1922, platinum/palladium print, 18.7 x 24.1 cm, SOLARI 91.001.001L