e CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY• UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 22 JANUARY 1986 ��-l-��­ �w(�"��-·. THE LETTERS FROM TINA MODOTTI TO ED"WARD "WESTON Contents Director's Statement by James Enyeart 3 The Letters of Tina Modotti to Edward Weston by Amy Stark 4 Introduction 7 Beginnings: Los Angeles, 1921-1923 9 Art and Revolution: Mexico, 1923-1924 17 Divided Loyalties: California and Mexico, 1925-1926 29 New Directions: California and Mexico, 1927-1928 46 Separate Destinies: Carmel and Moscow, 1929-1931 59 Selective Index 79 Acquisitions: July-December 1983 compiled by Sharon Alexandra 82 From the Archives: Nancy Newhall Papers by Roger Myers 94 The Center for Creative Photography is a research museum devoted to twentieth-century photography. Among its extensive collections are complete archives of photographers who have made significant and creative contributions to the field. Each issue of the Center's research series, Tl,e Arc/Jive, is drawn from its extensive collections of photographs, manuscripts, and negatives; most issues include a plate section of facsimile reproductions. Subscribers to TJ,e Arc/Jive also receive announcements of coming exhibitions and copies of the Center's collection guide series as they appear. Subscriptions mailed within the United States are S25 for four issues of The Arc/Jive; foreign mailings are S35. This represents a substantial discount from single copy rates, usually one-third to one-half price. To subscribe, send your check or money order to: Subscriptions, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 843 E. University Blvd., Tucson, Arizona 85719. Center for Creative Photography University of Arizona Copyright© 1986 Arizona Board of Regents All Rights Reserved Photographs and Texts by Edward Weston Copyright © 1981 Center for Creative Photography Photograph by Nancy Newhall Copyright© 1986 The Estate of Nancy Newhall Designed by Nancy Solomon Bembo Typography by Tiger Typographies Printed by Fabe Litho Ltd. Bound by Roswell Bookbinding Single copies and trade orders are distributed by: University of Arizona Press 1615 E. Speedway FRONT COVER: Tucson, Arizona 85719 BACK COVER: Detail from Letter 24.5: Tina Modotti to Edward Weston, 29 December 1924; from the Edward Weston Archive Postcard, n.d.: inscribed in Tina Modotti's handwriting, "Tina-wristwatch and ring. Edward-sunday suit." The Archive, from the Edward Weston Archive Research Series, of the Center for Creative Photography is supported in part by the Polaroid Corporation and the National Endowment for the Arts Director5 Statement by JAMES ENYEART ALTHOUGH TINA MODOTTI HOLDS A SIGNIFICANT PLACE returned to the United States. in the history of photography and her work has been Amy Stark, the Center's archivist, has edited this the subject ofmonographs and essays, she is also con­ issue of The Archive and has written an overview that sidered a majorpartner in artistic endeavors with Ed­ places Modotti's letters in historical context. Her schol­ ward Weston, particularly during their years together arly research and writing provide new insights into in Mexico. They shared aesthetic goals in the produc­ Modotti's life. We are grateful for her contribution. tion of their photographs, and they approached the We also wish to thank Dr. Amy Conger for her events oflife with the same passion. The intimacy of assistance in reviewing Amy Stark's essay and provid­ this artistic symbiosis is well recorded on Weston's ing additional insight into the Edward Weston Archive part through his published daybooks. With this issue through her dissertation and comments. As a guest of The Archi11e, Modotti's own letters record with scholar at the Center, Dr. Conger is writing an illus­ great emotion her perspective on their relationship trated catalog of Weston photographs for future pub­ and briefglimpses ofher life after 1926 when Weston lication by the Center. 3 >� .........,, �- G ,..�.,�r JJ. 4-� � • ' Page from T.ma Modotti s letter to Edward Weston' 4 June 1927 THE LETTERS FROM TINA MODOTTI TO EDWARD WESTON AMY STARK by Edward Weston: Tina Modotti in window of house in Tacubaya, Mexico City, 1923 Courtesy, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley Introduction THE YEARS THEY WERE TOGETHER NUMBER LESS THAN roles; and finally, mature friendship when approval five, yet the love affair and photographic collabora­ was not needed but the sympathetic ear was. tion between Edward Weston and Tina Modotti were It is fair to assume that Modotti did not expect that remarkable enough that their story has been retold her letters would be kept. Seeing her letters not as many times over the years. As the details blur with documents but as instruments of connection to a cher­ time, the story easily fits into mythic and romantic ished friend, she sent them as they came from her formulations. The great photographer and the great pen, full of misspellings and ink blots. What her let­ beauty meet and are irresistibly attracted. They move ters lacked in polish, they made up for in emotional to exotic Mexico. Weston's eye moves hungrily over immediacy. Modotti wrote as she spoke, we suspect, the face and body of his lover as he photographs her and it is her unadorned personality that lives in her again and again. Modotti receives her photographic letters sixty years later and still has the warmth and education at his hands and begins her political involve­ cadence of a voice that can move us. ment at the same time. The great photographer ex­ The special talent of letters is their ability to speak hausts the inventory of what he can learn from Mex­ directly from the heart. A sequence of photographs ico and Modotti, and returnsto California. The great of Modotti from 1922 to 1931 would show us only beauty becomes a serious photographer too and ful­ her face as it has been shaped by health, nature, and fills a destiny punctuated by political exile and a the photographer's art. Experiences are written on mysterious death. the human face, but often the lines of defeat or the The witnesses to the lives of Modotti and Weston tightness of cynicism we see on a face prevent us are now dwindling, and with their going, a certain from noting the real face below. Letters can reveal lingering reverberation of the living personalities of this other face. Modotti's letters tell us what words Edward and Tina is lost. We arc left with the evi­1 she never used and which ones she preferred, what dence of photographs and letters, diaries and cameras. she was moved to speak of and what she would not How should we approach these doorways to the past mention. They are richly suggestive precisely because What can we find for keys to unlock them? Will we they arc not particular images, but rather, the inexhaust­ be able to use what we see beyond them to give proof ible composites of abstract associations of thought. and dimension to lives obscured by fame? We must keep in mind the "gulf between the self In the personal papers of Edward Weston that were which experiences and the self which describes ex­ acquired by the Center in 1981, among the five linear perience" as we read these letters, however.' The un­ feet of correspondence, were found thirty-one letters bridgeable expanse between Modotti as a participant plus fragments of letters and notes from Tina Mo­ in events and as the creator of written descriptions of dotti. They span the years 1922 to 1931 and thereby these events is mirrored in us as spectators who seek encompass all stages of their relationship-awaken­ to recreate her mind by reading her letters. We are ing passion; more fully realized teacher/lover/student guaranteed a certain degree of failure. 7 Our interest in these letters can followmany direc­ targeted for publication, every attempt was made to tions.Modotti's writing on photography, politics, lit­ date them, to find the enclosures and photographic erature, feminism, and philosophy offer opportunities prints that had been mailed with them.This detective for study. To some researchers, the hope of under­ work often involved matching inks, fold-lines, and standing the puzzles and contradictions of Modotti's types of paper as well as referring to the daybooks relationship to Edward Weston may be the most in­ and other correspondence to establish at least the triguing challenge. Emotional and creative partner­ boundaries of tentative dates. The letters were retyped ships like Weston and Modotti's are rare enough that for legibility and conciseness, and Modotti's spelling it is naturalParallel toLives, want to understand what made it and punctuation slightly edited for consistency. Draw­ work. As the historian Phyllis Rose has said in her ing from the other correspondence in the Weston ar­ book chive and from the pages of his daybooks, we offer notes to the letters, an index, and chronologies to Marriages ... hold a particular fascination for clarify, elaborate, or suggest identification of people, the biographer-critic because they set two imag­ places, and events in the letters. We have avoided inations to work constructing narratives about parallel, rigid interpretations. experience presumed to be the same for both. The letters from Tina Modotti to Edward Weston In using the word however,2 I hope to published here have been quoted from previously, call attention to the gap between the narrative but they have never been available to researchers in lines as well as to their similarity. unabridged formor in the proper chronology.' These It is amazing good fortune to have even thirty­ letters can be seen in their original, handwritten form one letters survive. Henry James destroyed forty years by the researcher who visits the Center and who un­ worth of his correspondence and Charles Dickens questionably will extract even more information from burned the letters of twenty years.