Hands of the Marionette Player

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Hands of the Marionette Player

Artist Tina Modotti (Italian | American, 1896-1942)

Date1926

Dimensions9 x 5 7/16 in. (22.9 x 13.8 cm)

MediumGelatin-silver print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1986.76

Not on View

Label TextThe puppeteer’s arms extend, holding the controls of a menacing clay marionette. As if to free itself from the control that gives it animation, the arms of the scowling marionette appear to be pulling the strings, trying to yank the lines away from the puppeteer. The strong shadows cast by the intense Mexican sun dominate the central portion of the image and accentuate the veined arms, control sticks, strings, and scowling marionette. Tina Modotti was an extremely gifted photographer whose short (less than nine years) career was overshadowed by her complicated professional/sexual relationship with photographer Edward Weston in the early 1920s and by her intense political activism after 1930. She began making photographs in Mexico in 1922 while working as an assistant and model in Weston’s studio. Her portraits of artists and friends, Mexican peasants, and mothers and children are considered more sensitive than those made by her well-known mentor. Her work is usually sharply focused, un-manipulated, and “straight,” like Weston’s, but more often features overlapping patterns of dark and light.Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, Past and Present: Photographs from the Permanent Collection,Jan 22 - June 8, 1999. Toledo Museum of Art, Refraction/Reflection, April 20-September 2, 2012.