Who was Tina Modotti? Was she this actress with the poisonous beauty of Hollywood silent cinema, this muse, model and mistress of Edward Weston, this great photographer with a lightning career, this scandalous woman who collected lovers or this formidable communist who brought the revolution to Mexico in Moscow until the Spanish Civil War? And how to be all of this at the same time? The Jeu de Paume devotes the largest exhibition ever given to this brunette with large, melancholy black eyes, born in Italian poverty before conquering the New World at the age of 22, becoming a respected figure in the bohemia of Los Angeles in the 1920s. Imbued with its formal purity, its black and white prints paint a subtle portrait of this faithful friend of Frida Kahlo, an activist until her last breath.

Did you know?
Tina Modotti was the official photographer for the mural artists, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Jean Charlot. She made the movement known throughout the world and it was notably thanks to her images that the director of the MoMA in New York, Alfred Barr, discovered muralism.