CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 7/20/2017

Oozing with potency: Margaret Hooks' Tina Modotti Biography

Calla Lilies (c.1925) is reproduced from Tina Modotti: Photographer & Revolutionary, Margaret Hooks’ page-turner of a biography, back in print at last. She describes Modotti and Edward Weston’s 1923 arrival in Mexico. “The hated middle-class morality of the United States was now behind them and they made no concessions to it. They used their own names, refusing to pose as a married couple, and no-one in hotels or elsewhere questioned why Tina Modotti and Edward Weston were living together or sharing a room. The dreaded Ku Klux Klan would not bother them here… Tina and Edward were also thrilled that Prohibition stopped at the Rio Grande, and Weston in particular showed an intense interest in local bars, called pulquerias after the traditional brew, pulque, a maguey-cactus, distilled, green mash that oozed with alcoholic potency.”