READER: Adan Griego
Most American mainstream audiences probably encountered the master photographer Tina Modotti (1896-1942) for the first time in the 2002 film Frida, where the two great artists dance and kiss.
The original book was published in two separate parts and the current one volume work under review is a revised edition of those two earlier volumes. One suggestion for a translation would be to remove the two scenes where Batman and Robin engage in a political discussion in a hotel room. This is the one distraction that keeps me form endorsing this text with an otherwise well-deserved 10.
Those in academic and artistic circles have kept Tina Modotti away from the general public for too long. The multifaceted life of the artist-revolutionary deserves more than a two minute Hollywood dance/kiss. This 2012 is the 70 anniversary of her death. It's the right moment we've been waiting for.
Readers familiar with this genre, where most of the narratives are fiction, have seen the commercial and critical success of non-fiction titles like Maus: A Survivor's Story (by Art Spiegelman) and more recently, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (first a book and then a movie). In addition to the graphic novel regulars, a translation of Tina Modotti: una mujer del siglo XX has the potential to gain an even larger audience as a supplementary textbook to college courses on Mexican History or Latin American Art in very much the same way that Howard Zinn's A People's History of the American Empire has reached many a "reluctant reader," as graphic novel fans are often called.
For some one unfamiliar with this genre, Tina Modotti gained new life as she moved between intellectual and political circles: from Mexico City to Amsterdam to Berlin to Moscow to Paris to Spain. And finally back to Mexico, where she died mysteriously of a heart attack, barely 45 years of age, in the back seat of taxi. Therein lays one of the strengths of the text: make the familiar new and engaging to those already versed in 20th century Mexican history. In choosing a graphic novel (very successful in Spain and already translated into German, French and Italian) the author has brought Modotti's life, art and adventures to a new, wider readership.
Modotti went South of the Border in the summer of 1923 as an apprentice/assitant/muse/lover to Edward Weston (one of the most innovative and influential American photographers). Both experienced Mexico's cultural renaissance of the 1920s. It was this Mexican period that saw the former model and silent film actress become a master photographer and a revolutionary activist. These are the multiple stories that Angel de la Calle masterfully portrays in his graphic novel.
It's one of those creative liberties about their lives that famous people have to endure. Indeed Modotti hosted the wedding party for Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. We just don't know if they danced and kissed. If they did, it should be no surprise. Tina Modotti was always ahead of her time: imagine the gringa in jeans traveling through the country side asking Mexicans if she could capture a moment of their lives with her camera.
Most American mainstream audiences probably encountered the master photographer Tina Modotti (1896-1942) for the first time in the 2002 film Frida, where the two great artists dance and kiss.
