From Publishers Weekly
An Italian-born film star, Modatti learned photography with her lover Edward Weston in California during the early 1920s. She went on to develop a camera career of her own; she acquired several additional lovers, including Diego Rivera, in Mexico City's prevailing ferment of avant-garde art and politics; and, during the next 20 years, she became a major Communist revolutionary figure in Germany, Moscow and Spain. She was accused and exonerated of the assassination of one revolutionary lover; she risked her life to carry funds from Moscow to political prisoners in Romania; and she endured hardship, privation and deadly bombardments in Madrid and Barcelona. Repatriated to Mexico, she died in 1942 at the age of 46. Many of Modotti's portraits of celebrities and of common people as well as her journalistic photos are included here, along with characteristically simple, strong compositions--massed straw hats of workers on parade, telegraph wires akimbo, the heart of a calla lily. One of her studies, Roses, Mexico , fetched $165,000 at a Sotheby's auction in 1991. Hooks is a freelance foreign correspondent living in Mexico. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This detailed study of the Italian-born photographer and political activist seeks to gather recognition for Modotti (1896-1942), who has been overshadowed by her lovers Edward Weston and Diego Rivera. Having acted in Hollywood silent films and theater, she accompanied Weston to Mexico, serving as his apprentice, model, and lover. Her images of Mexico's workers, its poverty and political unrest, and her abstract depictions of flowers and interior architecture have recently been sold at record-setting prices. In 1924, she joined the Mexican Communist party, supporting antifascist ideals. When a revolutionary leader with whom she was passionately involved was assassinated, Modotti devoted the remainder of her life to communism. Despite a bothersome journalistic style, Hooks ( Guatemalan Women Speak , EPICA, 1991) conveys the dramatic life of an extraordinary woman. Recommended for large collections.- Joan Levin, MLS, ChicagoCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review
"A definitive biography."


From Booklist
Modotti (1896-1942) is known primarily as the prot{‚}eg{‚}ee and lover of Edward Weston, who persuaded him to go to Mexico in 1923, a move that clarified and advanced his artistic vision. In Hooks' biography, Modotti appears as the complex woman she was--earnest, beautiful, creative, naive, determined, emotional, tireless, vulnerable. That some of these characteristics conflicted is the key, perhaps, to her political victimization as the lover of Cuban revolutionary Julio Antonio Mella, murdered in 1929, and then as a hard-line Stalinist and companion to her final lover, Italian Communist Vittorio Vidali. An immigrant to San Francisco, Modotti began as an actress and model, which led her to Weston and then her own photography. At its fullest development during her Mexican years, her work blended Weston's sensuality, her own exquisite sense of design, and, more importantly, a genuinely political content in compelling images that supported a revolutionary socialist message. Although never a political theorist or leader, Modotti was persecuted and deported. Her life became sad and rootless, increasingly involved in ever riskier organizing and couriership for the Communists and ending in a lonely death in a Mexico City taxi. Hooks makes this tragic life gripping, and the book is well-illustrated with Modotti's and others' photographs. Gretchen Garner


From Kirkus Reviews
Hooks (a Mexico-based journalist) offers a well-researched, deeply sympathetic, and superbly illustrated biography of the passionate Tina Modotti (1896-1942), whose love of Communism, photography, and men made her a legend in her own time. Modotti emigrated in 1913 from Italy to San Francisco, where she found a niche in theatrical circles, but her marriage to artist Robo Richey soon took her to Hollywood and a brief movie career. Then her close relationship with photographer Edward Weston--as his model, lover, and, ultimately, apprentice--gave more of an outlet for her talent than either her marriage or the movies and, after her husband's death in Mexico, she and Weston went there to experience their own artistic awakening. They contributed to the creative ferment fed by Mexico's political turbulence, but their happiness was short-lived, with Weston returning to the US alone. Modotti--who became the favorite photographer of the muralists Diego Rivera and Jos‚ Clemente Orozco--took part increasingly in the revolutionary struggles sweeping the country, but when, in 1929, her exiled Cuban Communist lover was assassinated at her side on a Mexico City street, the ensuing publicity branded her as immoral and she rapidly became persona non grata. Expelled from Mexico, she journeyed through Germany to the Soviet Union, working eventually as a Communist field operative in Spain during the Civil War but abandoning photography entirely. In 1939, Modotti returned secretly to Mexico, only to die mysteriously three years later. A bit marred by unleavened prose, but a thorough account in words and photographs of an exceptional woman whose tragic life was nevertheless one of uncommon achievement. (125 b&w photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Vogue
"Riveting stuff about the beautiful, old-fashioned romantic idealist whose purity of intention ruled her life."


Book Description
A lavishly illustrated portrait of one of the most significant women photographers of the 20th century. Here is the definitive portrayal of the brilliant, iconoclastic woman who throughout her life (1896-1942) oscillated between her passion for her art and her fervor for radical politics. Tracing Modotti from her early years in Italy to 1920s Hollywood, then to vibrant Mexico City and on to Berlin and Moscow, and eventually to war-torn Spain, Hooks magnificently portrays Modotti's tempestuous life--her romantic, artistic. and political liaisons with Edward Weston, Diego Rivera, and Pablo Neruda. Incorporating interviews with Modotti's contemporaries and new archival material, Tina Modotti dramatically revives a fascinating life and secures Modotti's rightful place alongside Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe as one of the most accomplished women artists of our era.


From the Publisher
Hailed by the New York Times as "a definitive biography," the stunning portrait of one of the most fascinating women photographers of our time.


About the Author
Margaret Hooks has written for publications such as ARTnews, Elle, Afterimage, and Vogue. She is the author of Tina Modotti (Aperture Masters of Photography series). She lives in Miami Beach, Florida.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A lavishly illustrated portrait of one of the most significant women photographers of the 20th century.