Tina Modotti and Kati Horna, photographers of two images located between worker photography and humanism

Abstract

This paper puts side by side the life and work of two female photographers who were involved, in different ways, with the so-called worker photography in the 1920s and 1930s. Tina Modotti and Kati Horna were born in Europe, but their lives were marked by immigration, forced or not. At some point in their lives, they chose to live and work as photographers in Mexico. Both photographed mothers breastfeeding their children, Modotti in Mexico in 1927 and Horna in Spain during 1937. It is possible to follow the path of the representation of the nourishing mother who leaves post-revolutionary Mexico for Europe, sees herself facing fascism, and then returns as a refugee to Mexico. It is a path that enabled interchanges of visualities – specific visualities. The visual culture of the between-wars avant-gardes to which these photographers were linked was permeated by political engagements that can be seen, in their work, through those mothers. These photographers’ and their images’ travels marked the interchanges that helped to shape the mid-century humanist photography.

Keywords: Kati Horna, Tina Modotti, worker photography, humanist photography, visual culture.