Shadows, fire, snow

by Patricia Albers

Born in 1896, Tina Modotti lived one of the most brilliant lives of her era. A first-generation modernist photographer, she created internationally renowned images of extraordinary formal clarity and profound soulfulness. But Modotti's artistic achievement is only one facet of her astonishing story. A legendary beauty, spirited and sensuous, she scripted for herself a series of remarkable roles - glamorous actress, jazz age bohemian, Communist agent, and lover, colleague, and muse to photographer Edward Weston and painter Diego Rivera. Her friends included the illustrious - Frida Kahlo, Pablo Neruda, John Dos Passos, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Dorothea Lange, Sergei Eisenstein, and La Pasionaria - as well as workers, peasants, and humble people everywhere. Filled with the rich details of Modotti's turbulent interior life and of her journey through the cultural and political upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s, Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti is a provocative adventure.