Overlooked No More: Tina Modotti, Whose Life Was as Striking as Her Photographs
Her work is now in museums, but in the early 20th century, it was obscured by her romantic relationships with prominent men, among them her mentor, Edward Weston.
By Grace Linden
Grace Linden is a writer and art historian based in London.
- Aug. 30, 2025
This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.
In Tina Modotti’s photograph “Workers Parade,” a group of Mexican ejidatorios, or farmers, march en masse, their backs to the camera, their worn sombreros shading their heads in an instantly recognizable symbol of the working class.
To capture the image, of a May Day demonstration in 1926, Modotti had climbed onto a rooftop and used natural light and thoughtful composition to create a picture that fused modernist form with revolutionary purpose.
Copies of the photograph, along with dozens of others, are held in major museum collections, a testament to the growing recognition of her brief but meteoric career.
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