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• Bertha, Glendale, 1927, by Edward Weston
Down Mexico way
The Mexico Years is published to coincide with a show of the same title at London’s Barbican Gallery. it charts the time in the 1920s during which Modotti and Weston travelled to post-revolutionary Mexico and played their own part in the artistic period known as the Mexican Renaissance. Although the close relationship between the pair is well documented, their photography differs greatly. Weston’s previously pictorialist style transformed into a Modernist approach while in Mexico, featuring nudes, portraits and still lifes; while Modotti’s eye was attracted by the struggle of the Mexican people for social and economic reform - her still lifes are clearly the more politically motivated. This book demonstrates that both produced work of remarkable range, sometimes overlapping, often divergent. Weston and the widowed Modotti arrived in Mexico City in the summer of 1923. Edward Weston had left behind his wife and three sons (and his commercial portrait business) in pursuit of his art. The lovers worked together (and separately) for three years, so although it was a relatively short collaboration it produced an important, extensive and varied body of work now brought together in this book and exhibition. It was to influence the photography of the country which, until then, had few claims to represent an art form, and the work of some of Mexico’s best-known exponents (Bravo, Yampolsky) is featured here too. As the introductory text to The Mexico Years attests: ‘The 1920s marks the point at which photography was transformed from a tool of science to an agent of art’. And, in its Mexican context, through the work of Modotti and Weston, you have it all here in this fine book.
Tina Modotti & Edward Weston: The Mexico Years, Sarah M Lowe, published by Merrell in association with Barbican Art Galleries, London, £29.95, ISBN 1 85894 244 6.
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